UC-NRLF 


i-OGic  OF  BERGSON'S  PHILOSOPHY 


By 
ORGE  WILLIAMS  PECKHAM,  Jr. 


Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfilment  of  the  Requirements  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy  in  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy 

Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
1917 


EXCHANGE 


LOGIC  OF  BERGSON'S  PHILOSOPHY 

By 
GEORGE  WILLIAMS  PECKHAM,  Jr. 


Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfilment  of  the  Requirements  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy  in  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy 

Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
1917 


"843P4- 


UNIVERSITY  PRINTING  OFFICE 
COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For  help  in  preparing  the  present  dissertation  the  author  is  obliged 
to  Professor  Dewey,  under  whose  supervision  the  writing  progressed; 
to  Professor  Woodbridge,  who  aided  in  projecting  the  plan  of  the  work; 
and  to  Professors  Montague  and  Bush,  who  contributed  a  number  of 
important  suggestions.  Without  transferring  responsibility  for  what- 
ever contentions  occur  in  this  dissertation,  the  author  desires  to 
acknowledge  his  sense  of  gratitude  for  the  very  generous  assistance 
rendered  him  by  his  advisers. 


[Hi] 


37«9o 


INTRODUCTION 

Like  a  number  of  other  philosophical  writers  M.  Bergson 
presupposes  a  world  in  which  there  are  objects  of  knowledge  and 
knowledges  of  these  objects,  the  latter  being  true  in  the  measure  of 
their  resemblance  to  what  they  are  knowledges  of;  but  more  elabo- 
rately than  any  other  philosopher,  perhaps,  he  develops  a  consequence 
of  this  fundamental  assumption,  according  to  which  a  knowledge,  to 
be  absolutely  true,  must  coincide  with  what  it  is  knowledge  of.  He 
applies  this  supposition,  along  with  its  consequence,  first  to  psychol- 
ogy, then  to  physics  and  biology,  and,  finally,  to  natural  science  as 
a  whole.  In  Time  and  Free-Will  he  tries  to  effect  a  reform  of  psychol- 
ogy by  making  the  mind  it  describes  coincide  with  the  object  of 
psychological  science,  or  immediate  experience;  in  the  sequel  he 
repeats  the  attempt  with  regard  to  physics  and  biology.  In  other 
words,  M.  Bergson  condemns  whatever  discrepancy  he  succeeds  in 
discovering  between  science  and  concrete  experience;  he  finds  fault 
with  science  for  being  abstract  and  analytical,  and  his  philosophy 
argues  in  favor  of  the  validity  of  immediate  intuition.  It  is  not  an 
unequivocal  argument  in  favor  of  the  doctrine  of  immediate  intuition, 
however,  for  besides  the  difficulty  of  accounting  for  error  in  a  doctrine 
that  defines  any  object  presented  in  consciousness  as  the  truth  of 
itself,  an  attack  on  the  truth  of  the  natural  sciences,  to  carry  weight, 
requires  the  provision  of  a  substitute  science.  But — since  formula- 
tions are  abstract  irremediably  and  experience  concrete — in  formu- 
lating a  substitute  science  M.  Bergson  transgresses  the  fundamental 
assumption  of  his  argument,  which  declares  that  as  long  as  a  discrep- 
ancy exists  between  knowledge  and  the  object  of  knowledge,  the 
latter  must  fall  short  of  the  absolute  truth.  Hence  the  most  general 
characteristic  of  M.  Bergson's  logic:  He  discovers  what  he  takes  to 
be  flaws  of  an  epistemological  order  in  natural  science,  and  proposes 
a  novel  science  in  its  place,  in  which  the  same  flaws,  or  flaws  of  a 
similar  sort,  reappear. 

The  capital  significance  of  M.  Bergson's  writings,  for  technical  phil- 
osophy, then,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  he  originally  defines  a 
psychology  radically  distinct  from  ordinary  psychology ;  a  metaphysics 
of  matter  radically  distinct  from  ordinary  physics ;  and  a  general  meta- 
physics radically  distinct  from  natural  science,  and  relinquishes  these 
distinctions  one  by  one,  identifying  in  principle  the  sciences  he  pro- 
poses as  true,  philosophically,  with  the  sciences  of  nature  he  impugns 

[v] 


as  invalid.  This  relinquishment  is  the  chief  source  of  the  ambiguities 
that  have  frequently  been  noted  in  M.  Bergson's  writings,  and  which 
appear  sometimes  in  sharp  contradictions,  but  more  often  in  the 
double  or  multiple  meanings  of  the  terms  and  definitions  he  employs; 
for  in  one  form  or  another  the  ambiguity  springing  from  this  relin- 
quishment pervades  M.  Bergson's  philosophy,  and  is  the  only  element 
of  logic  common  to  his  successive  books  and  informing  them  with  a 
significant  systematic  unity.  As  to  the  purport  of  the  relinquishment 
we  describe,  it  may  mean  that  so  far  as  M.  Bergson  formulates  a 
succeedaneous  science  he  is  false  to  the  truth  of  his  own  inspiration — 
that,  strictly  speaking,  philosophical  truths  are  inexpressible  in  ab- 
stractions; or  it  may  mean  that  M.  Bergson's  initial  assumption 
should  be  renounced — that  his  need  to  fall  back  on  the  characteris- 
tics of  natural  science,  with  which  he  found  fault,  is  evidence  in  favor 
of  their  philosophical  validity.  We  prefer  the  latter  of  these  alterna- 
tives, but  the  reader  may  make  his  choice  without  prejudice  to  the 
following  exposition  of  the  difficulties  of  M.  Bergson's  logic. 


[vi] 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

I     Analysis  of  Time  and  Free- Will I 

Demonstration  of  M.  Bergson's  relinquishment  of  his  novel 
psychology 27 

II     Comparison  of  the  relinquishment  in  Time  and  Free- Will  with 
the  relinquishment  in 
Matter  and  Memory 34 

An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics       ......     48 

Creative  Evolution       .        .        . 53 

Summary         . 64 


vii  ] 


TIME  AND   FREE-WILL 

We  are  concerned  with  Time  and  Free-Will,  in  this  dissertation,  in 
order  to  show  that  the  book  embodies  a  doctrine  of  mind  no  sooner 
formulated  than  renounced ;  this  demonstration  in  turn  will  contribute 
to  prove  that  M.  Bergson's  philosophical  work  is  a  succession  of 
attempts  to  set  up  a  kind  of  cognition  prescribed  by  a  theory  of  knowl- 
edge; attempts  which  terminate  in  each  case  in  an  abdication  of  the 
theoretically  necessitated  results.  But  seeing  that  the  doctrine  of 
Time  and  Free-Will  is  difficult  of  comprehension  in  terms  of  itself,  we 
propose  to  commence  our  introductory  chapter  with  a  general  analysis 
of  the  book's  contents,  hoping  that  the  evidence  in  favor  of  our  pre- 
liminary proposition  may  be  made  unmistakably  manifest  by  this 
means. 

We  shall  seek  to  derive  the  parts  and  details  of  Time  and  Free-  Will 
from  a  small  number  of  considerations,  proceeding  as  though  we  were 
exhibiting  the  reasoning  that  guided  M.  Bergson  in  writing  his  book; 
if  the  reader  should  be  disinclined  to  acquiesce  in  our  analysis  as  an 
exposition  of  the  influences  that  cooperated  to  produce  M.  Bergson's 
book,  however,  its  acceptance  as  a  classification  of  the  logical  elements 
of  Time  and  Free-  Will  will  be  a  sufficient  concession  for  the  purposes  of 
our  inquiry. 

In  Time  and  Free-Will  we  discern  the  interaction  of  an  hypothesis 
and  a  fact ;  the  hypothesis  of  dualism  and  the  fact  that  associationistic 
psychology  is  incompetent  to  describe  the  immediate  accurately  in 
terms  of  its  analytical  elements — ideas,  mental  states,  and  atoms  of 
mind — since  the  immediate  is  a  combination  of  elements  that  inter- 
penetrate. For  brevity's  sake  the  fact  that  associationistic  descriptions 
of  the  immediate  are  imperfect  will  be  denominated  the  fact  of  unique- 
ness; for  the  confluence  of  psychological  elements  in  the  immediate  is, 
in  another  view,  simply  the  fact  that  each  phase  of  our  immediate 
experience  is  unique.  What,  now,  results  from  the  interaction  of  the 
fact  of  uniqueness  with  the  dualistic  hypothesis? 

Traditional  dualism — in  the  philosophy  of  Herbert  Spencer,  for 
instance, — neglects  to  provide  for  the  fact  of  uniqueness,  and  to  make  a 
provision  for  this  fact  in  the  dualistic  hypothesis  M.  Bergson  is  forced 
to  modify  radically  the  correspondence  aspect  of  the  suoposition  in 


2  LOGIC     OF     B  E  K  G  S  O  N     S     PHILOSOPHY 

which  he  starts;  he  is  forced  to  infer  that  the  mind  of  dualism,  which 
he  classifies  with  the  fact  of  uniqueness,  can  have  nothing  in  common 
with  the  matter  of  dualism,  since  if  mind  correspond  to  determined 
and  possibly  recurrent  patterns  of  matter — a  correspondence  feasible 
if  matter  and  mind  have  attributes  in  common — uniqueness  will  be 
reducible  to  some  kind  of  a  secondary  phenomenon  or  mere  appear- 
ance. The  result  of  the  combination,  therefore,  for  dualism,  is  the 
isolation  of  mind  from  quantity  in  all  its  forms;  mind  becomes  pure 
quality. 

Not  only  are  the  matter  and  mind  of  dualism  absolutely  separated 
by  the  logic  that  underlies  Time  and  Free- Will,  but  the  truth  that 
the  phases  of  the  immediate  come  to  us  unanalyzed  into  psychological 
elements  is  modified  thereby  into  a  conviction,  on  M.  Bergson's  part, 
that  the  immediate  has  no  magnitude  of  any  sort;  a  modification 
encouraged  by  the  dualistic  dogma  that  the  immediate  is  unextended. 
Thus  the  interaction  of  his  premises  makes  M.  Bergson  believe  that 
neither  intensity  nor  multiplicity  can  rightly  be  predicated  of  immedi- 
ate experience.  Consistently  with  this  belief,  how  does  he  deal  with 
the  phenomena  ordinarily  described  as  mental  intensity  and  multi- 
plicity? 

His  treatment  of  these  quantitative  aspects  of  experience  follows 
from  the  interaction  of  his  premises  as  indicated  already.  If  psychic 
magnitude,  so-called,  is  not  psychic,  dualism  presents  no  alternative 
to  the  view  that  it  must  be  material  qua  magnitude;  and  since  the 
material  division  of  the  dualistic  world  is  defined  as  characteristically 
spatial,  M.  Bergson  is  led  to  conclude  that  magnitude  of  the  intensive 
and  numerical  sorts  must  be  spatial — somehow.  His  treatment  of 
immediate  experience  is  thus  an  attempt  to  reduce  its  intensity  and 
multiplicity  to  space,  and  issues  in  the  claim  that  immediate  experi- 
ence, minus  intensity,  multiplicity,  and  extension,  is  real,  pure,  per- 
fect, or  veritable  mind. 

Having,  that  is,  observed  that  experience  is  no  accumulation  of 
particles  of  a  constitutive  material,  M.  Bergson  transfers  his  faith  in 
this  fact  to  conclusions  that  flow  from  the  fact  interpreted  in  the 
assumption  of  the  truth  of  the  dualistic  hypothesis.  He  believes  that 
the  phenomena  of  psychic  magnitude  are  illegitimate  and  illusory, 
and  the  problem  devolves  upon  him  quite  naturally:  Whence  comes 
the  notion,  entertained  in  both  science  and  common  sense,  that  the 
psychic  has  magnitude?  This  notion,  he  pronounces,  originates  in  a 
"confusion"  of  the  psychic  with  space. 

M.  Bergson  consequently  commences  his  discussion  of  intensity  in 
Time  and  Free-Will  with  the  question:  By  what  means  are  intensities 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSON      S      PHILOSOPHY 

transformed  into  magnitudes?  Inasmuch  as  the  origin  and  bearing 
of  this  question  are  not  clearly  explained  by  the  author  of  Time  and 
Free-Will,  its  readers  may  find  themselves  in  a  quandary  concerning 
the  drift  of  the  opening  discussion  of  the  book;  a  quandary,  moreover, 
not  entirely  likely  to  be  dispelled  by  a  further  reading  in  Time  and 
Free-Will,  for  reasons  to  which  we  must  next  proceed  to  devote  a  few 
moments  of  attention. 

The  interaction  of  the  premises  of  M.  Bergson's  argument,  we 
repeat,  brings  him  to  believe  that  the  immediate  is  non-intensive  and 
non-multiple,  as  well  as  being  unextended.  Nevertheless  a  difficulty 
confronts  him  when  he  attempts  an  exposition  of  the  consequences  of 
this  belief;  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  immediate  is  intensive  and 
numerical  and  extended;  or,  in  other  words,  qualitative  mind  and 
quantitative  matter  are  mingled  together  in  the  world  that  crowds 
itself  on  our  senses.  How  then  does  M.  Bergson  harmonize  with  his 
belief  that  the  immediate  is  nothing  but  quality  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
mixture  of  quality  and  quantity?  He  achieves  this  by  varying  the 
sense  in  which  he  affirms  the  conversion  of  space  into  psychic  inten- 
sity and  multiplicity;  by  varying,  that  is,  the  sense  of  the  "confusion" 
by  which  the  idea  of  mental  growth  (or  intensity),  and  mental  parts 
(or  multiplicity),  gains  currency — according  to  himself — in  science 
and  common  sense.  This  ambiguous  employment  of  the  concept  of 
"confusion"  gives  rise  to  a  sense  of  intangible  issues  that  is  likely  to 
beset  the  reader  of  Time  and  Free-Will  from  the  opening  of  the  book 
to  its  close;  for  the  cause  that  requires  M.  Bergson  to  temper  his 
general  assertion  that  quality  and  quantity  are  not  mingled  at  all  acts 
to  modify  each  one  of  his  specific  assertions  that  mind  is  non- 
quantitative. 

Thus-  in  Chapter  I  of  Time  and  Free-Will  M.  Bergson  affirms 
that  the  mind  can  not  manifest  intensity,  but  tempers  his  affirmation 
to  the  statement  that  if  mind  is  intensive  it  ought  not  to  be  so;  and 
this  to  the  assertion  that  mind  is  intensive ; — modulating  these  proposi- 
tions into  each  other  by  a  number  of  means  we  shall  scrutinize  pres- 
ently. In  Chapter  II  of  his  book  he  affirms  that  mind:  is  not 
— is  illegitimately — and  positively  is — multiple.  Believing  that  mental 
magnitudes,  so-called,  are  spatialities,  he  affirms  concomitantly  that 
mind:  is  not — is  in  a  way — and  quite  is — extended.  Since  quantita- 
tive mind  is  analyzable,  subject  to  associationism's  laws,  repetitious, 
and  capable  of  manifesting  causal  sequences,  we  discover  M.  Bergson 
asserting,  in  the  latter  portion  of  his  book,  that  analytical  formulations 
of  mind  are :  false — semi-false — true ;  that  the  laws  of  associationism 
are:  valid  and  invalid;  that  psychic  change  proceeds  into  pure  novelty: 


4  LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY 

always — usually — hardly  ever;  and  that  freedom  of  the  will  is:  cer- 
tain— probable — possible.  But  before  adducing  evidence  in  support 
of  the  analysis  we  are  introducing,  we  must  point  out  one  or  two 
further  peculiarities  of  the  doctrine  of  Time  and  Free-Will,  coordinate 
with  those  we  have  mentioned,  or  consecutive  upon  them. 

As  M.  Bergson's  initial  observation  that  the  immediate  is  not  a 
congeries  of  particles  of  mind-stuff  refutes  associationistic  psychology, 
it  likewise  refutes  the  idea  that  we  immediately  experience  moments 
of  time;  the  idea  that  the  phases  of  our  lives  are  distinct  as  a  multitude 
of  beads  on  a  wire  are  distinct ;  for  actually  the  instants  of  immediate 
experience  fuse  at  their  edges  and  intermingle  and  overlap.  M. 
Bergson,  therefore,  was  convinced  directly  that  the  temporal  dimen- 
sion is  incommensurable  with  immediate  experience,  and  this  convic- 
tion united  in  his  mind  with  the  belief  that  the  immediate  can  not 
be  multiple  (indirectly  derived  from  the  attempt  to  legitimatize  uni- 
queness in  the  dualistic  hypothesis),  to  bring  out  the  inference  that 
the  homogeneous  time  of  physics  is  not  time,  really  (time  being  by 
tradition  the  form  of  inner  sensibility  and  therefore  experienced  imme- 
diately), but — as  a  spurious  magnitude  of  the  immediate — space;  and 
the  further  inference  that  the  material  world  is  remote  from  veritable 
duration  and  change.  M.  Bergson  supported  his  consequent  attempt 
to  reduce  homogeneous  time  to  space  on  the  fact  that  in  mathematical 
physics  time  is  relational;  and  the  importance,  in  his  eyes,  of  the 
relativity  of  time  doubtless  encouraged  his  identification  of  duration 
with  mind ;  an  identification  with  advantages  of  an  expositional  order 
as  well. 

But  against  the  thesis  that  duration  is  heterogeneous  purely  stands 
the  general  impediment  to  M.  Bergson's  belief  that  mind  is  pure 
quality,  the  specific  difficulty,  in  this  case,  that  immediate  experience 
constitutes  the  multiple  hours  and  years  of  our  lives.  Hence  arises 
an  ambiguity  in  Time  and  Free-Will  as  to  the  measure  in  which 
heterogeneous  time  is  spatial,  leading  to  ambiguities  as  to  whether 
the  material  world  is  changeless;  whether  motion  is  spatial;  whether 
the  conservation  of  energy  is  valid  universally;  and  so  forth. 

M.  Bergson,  to  recapitulate,  starts  from  the  fact  that  the  immediate 
is  unique.  Interpreting  this  fact  on  the  basis  of  dualism  he  infers 
that  mind  is  non-quantitative;  that  intensity  and  multiplicity  are 
spatial;  and  that  mental  intensity  and  multiplicity  arise  by  an  illegiti- 
mate "confusion"  of  the  psychic  with  space;  he  supposes  that  the 
undoing  of  this  "confusion"  of  quantity  with  quality  will  establish 
a  psychological  science  and  effect  a  reform  in  philosophy.  But  to 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY  5 

demonstrate  the  confusion  of  the  psychic  with  space  is  to  prove  the 
hypothesis  of  dualism  erroneous — is  to  refute  one  premise  of  the 
argument  of  Time  and  Free-Will.  The  essential  meaning  of  this 
contradiction  must  be  investigated  in  a  more  ample  context  as  soon 
as  the  preceding  analysis  has  been  substantiated. 

We  begin  by  directing  the  attention  of  the  reader  to  two  or  three 
curious  facts  about  Time  and  Free-Will ,  which  can  easily  be  explained 
in  our  analysis. 

We  remark  first  that,  supposing  that  M.  Bergson's  convictions  in 
the  subject  of  intensity  and  multiplicity  originated  in  his  pre-occupa- 
tion  with  the  uniqueness  of  the  immediate,  or,  in  other  words,  with 
the  novelty  of  mind  or  the  freedom  of  the  will;  and  supposing  that 
these  convictions  were  deductions  as  to  what  would  have  to  be  true 
to  make  the  freedom  of  the  will,  in  the  sense  of  the  uniqueness  of  the 
immediate,  legitimate  in  the  dualistic  hypothesis; — it  is  then  com- 
prehensible that  Chapter  III  of  Time  and  Free-Will  should  be  logi- 
cally independent  of  the  earlier  chapters.  For  Chapter  III  is 
M.  Bergson's  fundamental  argument  on  the  uniqueness  of  the  imme- 
diate, in  relation  to  which  Chapters  I  and  II,  on  intensity  and 
multiplicity,  are,  in  a  logical  view,  little  more  than  elaborations  of 
detail.  On  this  supposition,  for  example,  it  is  comprehensible  in  par- 
ticular why  M.  Bergson  should  repeat  his  reduction  of  time  to  space, 
giving  it  in  Chapter  III  (pp.  190-199),  and  in  Chapter  II  (pp.  85- 
128),  since,  inasmuch  as  the  premises  of  Chapters  I  and  II  are 
really  presented  in  Chapter  III,  it  is  necessary  to  repeat  these  prem- 
ises, to  a  certain  extent,  in  the  earlier  chapters,  in  order  to  give  coher- 
ence to  the  argument  on  magnitude;  the  alternative  being  to  leave 
that  argument  in  the  air;  a  procedure  preferred  by  M.  Bergson  in  the 
division  of  that  argument  relating  to  intensity.  Analogously,  our 
analysis  explains  why  one  is  likely  to  have  the  unwonted  impression, 
in  reading  the  book,  of  proceeding  through  a  series  of  unsound  argu- 
ments to  a  sound  conclusion;  because  the  conclusion  is  a  fact  by 
itself,  apart  from  the  modification  of  dualism  undertaken  to  insure 
its  theoretical  legitimacy;  and  because  dualism,  in  the  event,  turns 
out  gravely  to  compromise  the  fact  of  uniqueness  by  the  curious 
results  of  their  combination. 

A  more  interesting  peculiarity  in  the  doctrine  of  Time  and  Free-Will , 
which  would  be  difficult  to  explain  without  the  aid  of  a  supposition 
such  as  the  one  we  propose,  is  that  the  arguments  by  which  M.  Berg- 
son attempts  to  prove  that  the  immediate  manifests,  genuinely, 
neither  growth  nor  diminution,  nor  number,  are  arguments  of  an 


6  LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY 

arbitrary  nature,  evidently  suggested  to  M.  Bergson  by  his  great 
ingenuity,  in  support  of  conclusions  reached  independently  of  them; 
as  is  clear  from  this,  that  they  are  slight  in  proportion  to  the  im- 
portance of  the  propositions  he  means  them  to  demonstrate,  and 
contradict,  markedly,  the  general  contentions  of  his  book.  We  will 
take  up  the  case  of  number  to  begin  with. 

We  said  that  M.  Bergson  concluded  from  the  fact  of  uniqueness 
that  mind  has  no  magnitude,  and  therefore  no  multiplicity,  and  that 
number  must  be  material  and  consequently  spatial.  This  explains 
why,  on  assigned  grounds  of  no  philosophical  value,  and  against  the 
consensus  of  opinion  among  mathematicians  he  tries  to  demonstrate 
that  space  is  implied  in  number.  His  argument  (p.  76)  is  this:  that 
number  implies  space  since  counting  means  thinking  together,  and 
that  things  can  only  be  assembled  in  space.  He  forestalls  the  objec- 
tion that  the  units  of  a  sum  might  be  added  in  time  by  saying  (p.  79) 
that  it  is  necessary  that  each  term  of  the  series  "  .  .  .  should  wait 
.  .  .  to  be  added  to  the  others;  but  how  could  it  wait  if  it  were 
nothing  but  an  instant  of  duration?  And  where  could  it  wait  if  we 
did  not  localize  it  in  space?  .  .  .  when  we  add  to  the  present 
moment  those  which  have  preceded  .  .  .  as  .  .  .  when  we  are 
adding  up  units,  we  are  not  dealing  with  these  moments  themselves, 
since  they  have  vanished  forever,  but  with  the  lasting  traces  which 
they  seem  to  have  left  in  space  .  .  .  ."  (cf.  p.  87).  In  other  words, 
M.  Bergson  argues  that  the  past  has  got  to  be  saved  up  somewhere — 
not  in  time,  which  is  past,  but  in  space,  which  resembles,  in  his 
argument,  a  pane  of  glass  which  each  bit  of  passing  duration  is  imag- 
ined to  scratch.  We  judge  this  argument  an  expedient  not  alone  on 
account  of  its  slightness,  nor  because  M.  Bergson  maintains  in  general 
that  the  past  is  stored  up  by  time,  but  because,  besides,  he  denies 
explicitly  a  few  pages  further  along  (p.  108.  cf.  pp.  116,  120)  that  space 
has  the  faculty  of  saving  up  what  is  past. 

Next  intensity.  M.  Bergson  is  persuaded  that  mind  has  no  quan- 
tity and  is  therefore  incapable  of  growth  or  diminution ;  that  when  it 
changes,  its  alteration  is  not  intensive,  but  ever  into  new  quality, 
as  though  its  change  went  in  no  direction  or  dimension,  but  invari- 
ably, so  to  say,  round  a  corner.  Whatever  intensity  may  wrongfully 
be  discovered  in  such  a  process,  M.  Bergson  is  convinced  from  before- 
hand, must  come  from  space.  Arbitrary,  in  consequence,  are  the 
analyses  of  Chapter  I  of  Time  and  Free-Will,  which  simply  point 
out,  in  the  case  of  one  sort  of  psychic  change  after  another,  that 
where  common  sense  and  science  take  for  granted  a  single  kind  of 
mental  quality  increasing  or  diminishing,  there  is  really  a  series  of 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  7 

distinct  qualities  with  nothing  in  common,  joined  through  "confusion" 
by  pseudo-intervals  that  can  be  traced  back  to  space.  As  both 
qualities  and  intervals,  mind  and  space,  are  present  in  the  immediate, 
M.  Bergson  can  arbitrarily  stress  the  former  and  disparage  the  latter 
in  a  multitude  of  ways  without  any  difficulty.  For  instance,  he 
describes  an  increasing  intensity  of  pity  as  really  (p.  19) :  "  .  .  .a 
transition  from  repugnance  to  fear,  from  fear  to  sympathy,  and  from 
sympathy  itself  to  humility."  Or  again,  he  writes  (p.  47):  "When 
you  say  that  a  pressure  on  your  hand  becomes  stronger  and  stronger, 
see  whether  you  do  not  mean  that  there  was  first  a  contact,  then  a 
pressure,  afterwards  a  pain,  and  that  this  pain  itself,  after  having 
gone  through  a  series  of  qualitative  changes,  has  spread  further  and 
further  over  the  surrounding  region.  Look  again  and  see  whether 
you  do  not  bring  in  the  more  and  more  intense,  i.  e.,  more  and  more 
extended,  effort  of  resistance  .  .  .  ."  The  final  portion  of  this 
discussion  of  intensity  (pp.  52-72)  is  an  attempt  to  show  that  psycho- 
physics  is  theoretically  absurd  since  it  assumes  that  the  qualities  in 
a  series  of  sensations,  produced  by  a  continuous  increase  in  the  exter- 
nal cause,  are  connected  by  quantitative  intervals,  whereas  (p.  66): 

'    .  not  only  are  you  unable  to  explain  in  what  sense  this  transi- 

tion is  a  quantity,  but  reflection  will  show  you  that  it  is  not  even  a 
reality;  the  only  realities  are  the  states  S  and  S'  through  which  I  pass. " 

'The  mistake  which  Fechner  made  .  .  .  was  that  he  believed 
in  an  interval  between  two  successive  sensations  S  and  S'  .  .  .  f 
(p.  67).  But  this  runs  counter  to  M.  Bergson's  general  logic,  for 
he  usually  insists  that  change  in  mind  is  continuous,  and  states  of 
mind  not  philosophically  real.  Let  us  now  go  on  to  the  substantiation 
of  our  analysis  by  the  citation  of  the  contradictions  into  which  we 
said  that  M.  Bergson  must  fall. 

We  said  that  M.  Bergson's  premises  produce  the  conclusion  that 
quality  and  quantity,  or  mind  and  matter,  are  separate;  but  that 
since  quality  and  quantity  are  mingled  in  the  immediate  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  is  led  to  modify  this  theoretical  contention;  and  that  inas- 
much as  his  original  premises  force  him  to  conclude  that  intensity 
and  number  are  spatial,  and  as  intensity  and  number  are  predicable  of 
what  passes  for  mind,  M.  Bergson's  logic  develops  into  a  proof  that 
the  immediate,  or  mind,  is  partly  spatial,  that  quality  and  quantity 
are  mingled  in  a  sense;  although  the  mingling  is  disparaged  as  a  ''con- 
fusion "  to  be  done  away  with  for  the  purposes  of  philosophy.  The  am- 
biguity inherent  in  the  employment  of  the  concept  "confusion,"  we  said, 
is  apparent  in  every  topic,  very  nearly,  treated  in  Time  and  Free- Will. 


8  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

Quality  and  Quantity  in  General.  "  .  .  .  there  is  no  point  of 
contact  between  .  .  .  quality  and  quantity"  (p.  70).  But  we  "con- 
ventionally assimilate"  them;  .  .  .  the  more  our  knowledge 
increases,  the  more  we  perceive  .  .  .  quantity  behind  quality,  the 
more  also  we  tend  to  thrust  the  former  into  the  latter  .  .  . "  (p.  70). 
In  fact:  "  .  .  .  the  confusion  of  quality  with  quantity "  if  confined 
to  the  phenomena  of  consciousness  taken  separately  "would  give  rise 
to  obscurities  .  .  .  rather  than  problems.  But  by  ...  intro- 
ducing space  into  our  perception  of  duration,  it  corrupts  our  feeling 
of  ...  change,  of  movement,  and  of  freedom"  (p.  74).  Indeed, 
"the  problem  of  freedom  .  .  .  has  its  origin  in  the  illusion  through 
which  we  confuse  .  .  .  quality  and  quantity"  (p.  240).  Yet  else- 
where: "  .  .  .  every  phenomenon"  in  the  physical  world  "is  there 
presented  under  two  aspects,  the  one  qualitative  and  the  other 
extensive  .  .  ."  (p.  63).  '  .  physical  phenomena  . 

are   distinguished    by   quality    not   less    than    by   quantity  .     .     ." 
(p.  204). J 

Psychic  Intensity  in  General.  "The  intensity  of  a  simple  state 
.  .  .  is  not  quantity,  but  its  qualitative  sign.  You  will  find  that 
it  arises  from  a  compromise  between  pure  quality,  which  is  the  state 
of  consciousness,  and  pure  quantity,  which  is  necessarily  space.  Now 
you  give  up  this  compromise  .  .  .  when  you  study  external  things 
.  .  .  Why,  then,  do  you  keep  this  hybrid  concept  when  you 
analyze  .  .  .  the  state  of  consciousness?  If  magnitude,  outside  you, 
is  never  intensive,  intensity,  within  you,  is  never  magnitude"  (p.  224). 
But,  at  another  point  of  the  argument,  "Shall  we  call  the  intensity  of 
light  a  quantity,  or  shall  we  treat  it  as  a  quality"  (p.  50)?  "The 
sensations  of  sound  display  well-marked  degrees  of  intensity"  (p.  43). 
"  The  intensity  of  sensations  varies  with  the  external  cause  .  .  .how 
shall  we  explain  the  presence  of  quantity  in  an  effect  which  is  inex- 
tensive  .  .  .  "  (p.  32)  ?2 

Psychic  Multiplicity.      '    .  the  multiplicity  of  conscious  states, 

regarded  in  its  original  purity,  is  not  at  all  like  the  discrete  multi- 
plicity which  goes  to  form  a  number  (p.  121)  .  .  .  there  is  ... 
multiplicity  without  quantity.  ...  I  said  that  several  conscious 
states  are  organized  into  a  whole  .  .  .  but  the  very  use  of  the  word 
'several'  shows  that  I  had  already  isolated  these  states  ...  by 
the  very  language  which  I  was  compelled  to  use  I  betrayed  the  deeply 
ingrained  habit  of  setting  out  time  in  space.  From  this  spatial 

»C/.  especially  pp.  34,  35,64.  109,  no,  112,  121,  124,  125,  213,  217,  225,  230,  231,  239;  and  pp.  72,  73, 
74,  120,  126,  130,  181,  209.  210,  218,  223.  224,  227,  228,  229. 
*Cf.  Chaoter  I,  passim 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY  9 

setting  out  ...  we  are  compelled  to  borrow  terms  which  we  use 
to  describe  the  state  of  mind  .  .  .  these  terms  are  .  .  .  mislead- 
ing .  .  .  the  idea  of  a  multiplicity  without  relation  to  number  or 
space,  although  clear  for  pure  reflective  thought,  can  not  be  trans- 
lated into  the  language  of  common  sense"  (p.  122).  '  .  .  .  con- 
scious life  displays  two  aspects  according  as  we  perceive  it  directly  or 
by  refraction  through  space.  Considered  in  themselves,  the  deep- 
seated  states  have  no  relation  to  quantity,  they  are  pure  quality" 
(p.  137).  "We  should  .  .  .  distinguish  two  .  .  .  aspects  of 
conscious  life  .  .  .  below  the  self  with  well-defined  states  a  self 
in  which  succeeding  each  other  means  melting  into  one  another  .  .  . 
But  we  are  generally  content  with  the  first,  i.  e.,  with  the  shadow  of 
the  self  .  .  .  Consciousness  .  .  .  substitutes  the  symbol  for  the 
reality,  or  perceives  the  reality  only  through  the  symbol.  As  the 
self  thus  refracted,  and  thereby  broken  to  pieces,  is  much  better 
adapted  to  the  requirements  of  social  life  .  .  .  consciousness  pre- 
fers it,  and  gradually  loses  sight  of  the  fundamental  self"  (p.  128). 
"  .  .  .  our  ego  comes  in  contact  with  the  external  world  at  its 
surface  (p.  125)  .  .  .  the  mutual  externality  which  material  objects 
gain  from  their  juxtaposition  in  homogeneous  space  .  .  .  spreads 
into  the  depths  of  consciousness:  little  by  little  our  sensations  are 
distinguished  from  one  another  .  .  .  and  our  feelings  or  ideas  come 
to  be  separated  like  the  sensations  with  which  they  are  contempora- 
neous" (p.  126).  "How  could  this  self,  which  distinguishes  external 
objects  so  sharply  .  .  .  withstand  the  temptation  to  introduce  the 
same  distinctions  into  its  own  life  and  to  replace  the  interpenetration 
of  its  psychic  states,  their  wholly  qualitative  multiplicity,  by  a  numeri- 
cal plurality  of  terms  ...?...  In  place  of  an  inner  life 
whose  successive  phases,  each  unique  of  its  kind,  can  not  be  expressed 
in  the  fixed  terms  of  language,  we  get  a  self  which  can  be  artificially 
reconstructed,  and  simple  psychic  states  which  can  be  added  .  .  . 
Now,  this  must  not  be  thought  to  be  a  mode  of  symbolical  representa- 
tion only,  for  immediate  intuition  and  discursive  thought  are  one  in 
concrete  reality,  and  the  very  mechanism  by  which  we  only  meant 
at  first  to  explain  our  conduct  will  end  by  also  controlling  it.  Our 
psychic  states,  separating  then  from  each  other,  will  get  solidified 
.  .  . "  (p.  236).  In  chapter  one  the  distinct  plurality  of  psychic 
elements  is  an  explicit  part  of  the  argument  on  intensity.3 

Analysis.     "The  feeling  .     .     .  is  a  being  which  lives  .     .     .  be- 
cause the  duration  in  which  it  develops  is  a  duration  whose  moments 

»See  especially  pp.  8,  10,  26.  31,  57-    Cf.  pp.  84,  99,  100,  104,  105,  120,  131,  132,  136,  162,  163, 
164,  176,  196,  211,  216,  218,  226,  229,  235. 


io  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

permeate  one  another.  By  separating  these  moments  from  each  other, 
by  spreading  out  time  in  space,  we  have  caused  this  feeling  to 
lose  its  life  ...  we  believe  that  we  have  analyzed  our  feeling, 
while  we  have  really  replaced  it  by  a  juxtaposition  of  lifeless  states 
.  if  some  bold  novelist  .  .  .  shows  us  under  .  .  .  this  jux- 
taposition of  simple  states  an  infinite  permeation  ...  we  commend 
him  .  .  .  however  .  .  .  the  very  fact  that  he  spreads  out  our 
feeling  in  a  homogeneous  time,  and  expresses  its  elements  by  words, 
shows  that  he  in  his  turn  is  only  offering  us  its  shadow"  (p.  132). 

'  .  .  .  a  feeling  .  .  .  contains  an  indefinite  plurality  of  con- 
scious states:  but  the  plurality  will  not  be  observed  unless  it  is,  as 
it  were,  spread  out  in  ...  space.  We  shall  then  perceive  terms 
external  to  one  another,  and  these  terms  will  no  longer  be  the  states 
of  consciousness  themselves,  but  their  symbols,  or,  speaking  more 
exactly,  the  words  which  express  them. ...  As  soon  as  we  try  to 
analyze"  a  conscious  state,  it  "will  be  resolved  into  impersonal  ele- 
ments .  .  .  But  because  our  reason  .  .  .  draws  these  multiple 
elements  out  of  the  whole,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  were  contained 
in  it.  For  within  the  whole  they  did  not  occupy  space  and  did  not 
care  to  express  themselves  by  means  of  symbols"  (p.  162).  "  .  .  . 
we  can  analyze  a  thing,  but  not  a  process;  we  can  break  up  extensity, 
but  not  duration.  Or,  if  we  persist  in  analyzing  it,  we  unconsciously 
transform  the  process  into  a  thing,  duration  into  extensity  .  .  ." 
(p.  219).  .  .  .  even  in  the  cases  where  the  action  is  freely  per- 

formed, we  can  not  reason  about  it  without  setting  out  its  conditions 
externally  to  one  another,  therefore  in  space  and  no  longer  in  duration  " 
(p.  240).  The  "breaking  up  of  the  constituent  elements  of  an  idea, 
which  issues  in  abstraction,  is  too  convenient  for  us  to  do  without 
it  in  ordinary  life  and  even  in  philosophical  discussion.  But  when 

.  .  .  substituting  for  the  interpenetration  of  the  real  terms  the 
juxtaposition  of  their  symbols,  we  claim  to  make  duration  out  of 
space,  we  invariably  fall  into  the  mistakes  of  associationism  "  (p.  I34).4 
Associationism.  "Associationism  .  .  .  makes  the  mistake  of  con- 
stantly replacing  the  concrete  phenomenon  which  takes  place  in  the 
mind  by  the  artificial  reconstruction  of  it  given  by  philosophy  .  .  . " 
(p.  163).  "The  associationist  reduces  the  self  to  an  aggregate  of 
conscious  states  .  .  .  But  if  he  sees  in  these  .  .  .  states  .  .  . 
only  their  impersonal  aspect,  he  may  set  them  side  by  side  forever 
without  getting  anything  but  .  .  .  the  shadow  of  the  ego  projecting 
itself  into  space"  (p.  165).  "  .  .  .in  proportion  as  the  conditions 
of  social  life  are  .  .  .  realized  .  .  .  our  conscious  states  .  .  . 

*Cf.  pp.  128,  129,  130,  176,  177,  200. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  n 

are  made  into  objects  or  things.  .  .  .  Henceforth  we  no  longer 
perceive  them  except  in  the  homogeneous  medium  in  which  we  have 
set  their  image.  .  .  .  Thus  a  second  self  is  formed  which  obscures 
the  first,  a  self  whose  existence  is  made  up  of  distinct  moments,  whose 
states  are  separated  from  one  another  and  easily  expressed  in  words. 
I  do  not  mean,  here,  to  split  up  the  personality,  nor  to  bring  back  in 
another  form  the  numerical  multiplicity  which  I  shut  out  at  the 
beginning.  It  is  the  same  self  which  perceives  distinct  states  at  first, 
and  which  by  afterwards  concentrating  its  attention,  will  see  these 
states  melt  into  one  another  like  the  crystals  of  a  snowflake  when 
touched  for  some  time  with  the  finger.  And  in  truth,  for  the  sake  of 
language,  the  self  has  everything  to  gain  by  not  bringing  back  confu- 
sion where  order  reigns,  and  in  not  upsetting  this  ingenious  arrange- 
ment of  almost  impersonal  states.  .  .  .  An  inner  life  with  well- 
distinguished  moments  and  with  clearly  characterized  states  will 
answer  better  the  requirements  of  social  life.  Indeed,  a  superficial 
psychology  may  be  content  with  describing  it  without  thereby  falling 
into  error,  on  condition,  however,  that  it  restricts  itself  to  the  study 
of  what  has  taken  place  and  leaves  out  what  is  going  on"  (p.  138) .5 

Mind  in  Relation  to  Repetition.  "As  we  are  not  accustomed  to 
observe  ourselves  directly  .  .  .  we  .  .  .  believe  that  real  dura- 
tion ...  is  the  same  as  the  duration  which  glides  over  the  inert 
atoms  without  penetrating  .  .  .  them.  Hence  it  is  that  we  do  not 
see  any  absurdity  in  putting  things  back  in  their  place  after  a  lapse  of 
time,  in  supposing  the  same  motives  acting  afresh  on  the  same  per- 
sons. .  .  .  That  such  an  hypothesis  has  no  real  meaning  is  what 
we  shall  show  later  on"  (p.  154).  "To  say  that  the  same  inner  causes 
will  reproduce  the  same  effects  is  to  assume  that  the  same  cause  can 
appear  a  second  time  on  the  stage  of  consciousness.  Now,  if  duration 
is  what  we  say,  deep-seated  psychic  states  are  radically  heterogeneous 
to  each  other.  .  .  .  It  is  no  use  arguing  that,  even  if  there  are  no 
two  deep-seated  psychic  states  which  are  altogether  alike,  yet  analysis 
would  resolve  these  different  states  into  more  general  and  homogene- 
ous elements.  .  .  .  This  would  be  to  forget  that  even  the  simplest 
psychic  elements  possess  a  personality  and  life  of  their  own,  however 
superficial  they  may  be  .  .  ."  (p.  199).  The  "  intuition  of  a  homo- 
geneous medium  .  .  .  enables  us  to  externalize  our  concepts  in 
relation  to  one  another  .  .  .  and  thus  ...  by  getting  everything 
ready  for  language  .  .  .  prepares  the  way  for  social  life  (p.  236). 
.  .  .  In  place  of  a  heterogeneous  duration  whose  moments  perme- 
ate one  another,  we  .  .  .  get  a  homogeneous  time,  whose  moments 

*C/.  pp.  135.  158,  161,  162,  164,  168,  226,  237. 


12  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

are  strung  on  a  spatial  line.  In  place  of  an  inner  life  whose  successive 
phases,  each  unique  of  its  kind,  can  not  be  expressed  in  the  fixed  terms 
of  language,  we  get  a  self  which  can  be  artificially  reconstructed,  and 
simple  psychic  states  which  can  be  added.  .  .  .  Our  psychic  states, 
separating  then  from  each  other,  will  get  solidified  .  .  .  little  by 
little,  as  our  consciousness  thus  imitates  the  process  by  which  nervous 
matter  procures  reflex  actions,  automatism  will  cover  over  freedom. 

.     .     .  at    this    point  .     .     .  the    associationists  .     .     .  come    in 

.  .  .  As  they  look  at  only  the  commonest  aspect  of  our  conscious 
life,  they  perceive  clearly  marked  states,  which  can  recur  in  time  like 
physical  phenomena  .  .  ."  (p.  237). 6 

Homogeneous  Time.    "    .     .     .if  space  is  to  be  defined  as    ... 
homogeneous,  it  seems  that    .     .     .  every  homogeneous  medium  will 
be   space.      For,    homogeneity  .     .     .  consisting   in   the   absence   of 

.  .  .  quality,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  two  forms  of  the  homogeneous 
could  be  distinguished.  .  .  .  We  may  therefore  surmise  that  time, 
conceived  under  the  form  of  a  homogeneous  medium,  is  some  spurious 
concept,  due  to  the  trespassing  of  the  idea  of  space  upon  the  field  of 
pure  consciousness"  (p.  98).  "  .  .  .  time  conceived  under  the 
form  of  a  .  .  .  homogeneous  medium,  is  nothing  but  the  ghost  of 
space  haunting  the  reflective  consciousness"  (p.  99).  "There  are 

.     .     .  two  possible  conceptions  of  time,  the  one  free  from  all  alloy, 
the  other  surreptitiously  bringing  in   the  idea  of  space"    (p.    100). 
1   .     .     .  from  the  moment  .     .     .  you  attribute  the  least  homo- 
geneity to  duration,  you  .     .     .  introduce  space"  (p.  104).    "... 
it  will  be  said  .     .     .  that  the  time  which  .     .     .  our  clocks  divide 

.  .  .  must  be  a  measurable  and  therefore  homogeneous  magni- 
tude. It  is  nothing  of  the  sort  .  .  .  and  a  close  examination  will 
dispel  this  last  illusion"  (p.  107).  "It  is  .  .  .  obvious  that,  if  it 
did  not  betake  itself  to  a  symbolical  substitute,  our  consciousness 
would  never  regard  time  as  a  homogeneous  medium.  .  .  .  But  we 
naturally  reach  this  symbolical  representation  .  .  .  Principally  by 
the  help  of  motion  .  .  .  duration  assumes  the  form  of  a  homo- 
geneous medium,  and  .  .  .  time  is  projected  into  space.  But 
.  any  repetition  of  a  well-marked  external  phenomenon  would 
suggest  to  consciousness  the  same  mode  of  representation.  Thus 

.  .  .  we  are  necessarily  led  to  the  idea  of  a  homogeneous  time, 
the  symbolical  image  of  real  duration"  (p.  124).  "  .  .  .  daily 
experience  ought  to  teach  us  to  distinguish  between  duration  as 
quality  .  .  .  and  time  so  to  speak  materialized"  (p.  127).  "Below 
homogeneous  duration  ...  a  close  psychological  analysis  distin- 

6Cf.  pp.   200.   201,   2IQ,   239. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  13 

guishes   a   duration    whose    heterogeneous    moments    permeate   one 
another  ..."   (p.  I28).7 

Relation  of  the  Material  World  to  Time.  "To  put  duration  in  space 
is  .  .  .to  contradict  oneself.  ...  we  must  not  say  that  external 
things  endure,  but  rather  that  there  is  in  them  some  inexpressible 
reason  in  virtue  of  which  we  can  not  examine  them  at  successive 
moments  of  our  own  duration  without  observing  that  they  have 
changed"  (p.  227).  "It  .  .  .  follows  that  there  is  neither  duration 
nor  even  succession  in  space,  if  we  give  to  these  words  the  meaning  in 
which  consciousness  takes  them:  each  of  the  so-called  successive 
states  of  the  external  world  exists  alone;  their  multiplicity  is  real 
only  for  a  consciousness  that  can  first  retain  them  and  then  set  them 
side  by  side  by  externalizing  them  in  relation  to  one  another"  (p.  120). 
"It  is  because  I  endure  .  .  .  that  I  picture  to  myself  what  I  call 
the  past  oscillations  of  the  pendulum  at  the  same  time  as  I  perceive 
the  present  oscillation.  Now,  let  us  withdraw  .  .  .  the  ego  which 
thinks  these  so-called  successive  oscillations:  there  will  never  be  more 
than  a  single  oscillation  .  .  .  hence  no  duration.  .  .  .  within  our 
ego  there  is  succession  without  mutual  externality;  outside  the  ego 

.  .  .  mutual  externality  without  succession  ...  no  succession, 
since  succession  exists  solely  for  a  conscious  spectator  who  keeps  the 
past  in  mind.  .  .  .  Now,  between  this  succession  without  exter- 
nality and  this  externality  without  succession,  a  kind  of  exchange 
takes  place  .  .  .  similar  to  what  physicists  call  .  .  .  endosmosis. 

.  .  .  the  oscillations  of  the  pendulum  .  .  .  profit  .  .  .  from 
the  influence  which  they  have  exercised  over  our  conscious  life.  Owing 
to  the  fact  that  our  consciousness  has  organized  them  as  a  whole  in 
memory,  they  are  first  perceived  and  afterwards  disposed  in  a  series: 
in  a  word,  we  create  for  them  a  fourth  dimension  of  space,  which  we 
call  homogeneous  time  .  .  ."  (p.  108).  "  .  .  .  science  seems  to 
point  to  many  cases  where  we  anticipate  the  future.  Do  we  not 
determine  beforehand  .  .  .  the  greater  number  of  astronomical 
phenomena?  .  .  .  No  doubt.  .  .  .  Indeed  .  .  .  the  reasons 
which  render  it  possible  to  foretell  an  astronomical  phenomenon  are 
the  very  ones  which  prevent  us  from  determining  in  advance  an  act 
which  springs  from  our  free  activity.  For  the  future  of  the  material 
universe,  although  contemporaneous  with  the  future  of  a  conscious 
being,  has  no  analogy  to  it"  (p.  192). 8 

Spatiality  of  Motion.  "  .  .  .  to  .  .  .  confusion  between  motion 
and  .  .  .  space  .  .  .  the  paradoxes  of  the  Eleatics  are  due;  for 

1  Cf.  pp.  106,  no,  115,  n6,  120.  I2i,  181,  188,  193,  194,  195,  196,  197,  198,  218,  226,  228,  229, 
230,  238. 

8C/.  especially  pp.  116,  205,  206. 


14  LOGIC     OF      BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

the  interval  which  separates  two  points  is  infinitely  divisible,  and  if 
motion  consisted  of  parts  .  .  .  the  interval  would  never  be  crossed. 
.  .  .  This  is  what  Zeno  leaves  out  of  account  .  .  .  forgetting 
that  space  alone  can  be  divided  and  .  .  .  confusing  space  with 
motion.  Hence  we  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  admit  ...  a 
discrepancy  between  real  and  imaginary  motion.  .  .  .  Why  resort 
to  an  .  .  .  hypothesis  .  .  .  about  .  .  .  motion,  when  imme- 
diate intuition  shows  us  motion  within  duration,  and  duration  outside 
space"  (p.  112)?  "We  generally  say  that  a  movement  takes  place 
in  space.  .  .  .  Now,  if  we  reflect  ...  we  shall  see  that  the  suc- 
cessive positions  of  the  moving  body  .  .  .  occupy  space,  but  that 
the  process  by  which  it  passes  from  one  position  to  the  other  . 
eludes  space.  .  .  .  motion  .  .  .  is  a  mental  synthesis,  a  psychic 
and  therefore  unextended  process"  (p.  no).  "This  is  just  the 
idea  of  motion  which  we  form  when  we  think  of  it  by  itself,  when,  so 
to  speak,  from  motion  we  extract  mobility.  ...  A  rapid  gesture 
made  with  the  eyes  shut,  will  assume  for  consciousness  the  form  of  a 
purely  qualitative  sensation  as  long  as  there  is  no  thought  of  the  space 
traversed.  In  a  word,  there  are  two  elements  to  be  distinguished  in 
motion,  the  space  traversed  and  the  act  by  which  we  traverse  it,  the 
successive  positions  and  the  synthesis  of  these  positions.  The  first  of 
these  elements  is  a  homogeneous  quantity;  the  second  has  no  reality 
except  in  a  consciousness:  it  is  a  quality.  .  .  .  But  here  again  we 
meet  with  a  case  of  endosmosis,  an  intermingling  of  the  .  .  .  sensa- 
tion of  mobility  with  the  .  .  .  representation  of  the  space  tra- 
versed. .  .  .  we  attribute  to  the  motion  the  divisibility  of  the  space 
which  it  traverses  and  .  .  .  accustom  ourselves  to  projecting  this 
act  itself  into  space  .  .  .  as  if  .  .  .  localizing  ...  a  progress 
in  space  did  not  amount  to  asserting  that,  even  outside  consciousness, 
the  past  co-exists  along  with  the  present"  (p.  in).9 

Does  Mind  Always  Progress  into  Novelty?  '  .  .  .  the  process  of 
our  free  activity  goes  on  .  .  .in  the  obscure  depths  of  consciousness 
at  every  moment  of  duration  .  .  ."  (p.  237,  note).  "  .  .  .  deter- 
minism can  not  help  substituting  words  for  .  .  .  the  ego  itself.  By 
giving  the  person  ...  a  fixed  form  by  means  of  sharply  defined 
words,  it  deprives"  the  person  "of  living  activity.  .  .  .  But  this 
mechanism  .  .  .  can  not  hold  good  against  the  witness  of  an  atten- 
tive consciousness,  which  shows  us  inner  dynamism  as  a  fact"  (p.  171). 
"  .  .  .  freedom  must  be  sought  in  a  certain  .  .  .  quality  of  the 
action  itself.  .  .  .  The  difficulty  arises  from  the  fact  that  both 
parties"  (to  the  dispute  over  freedom)  "picture  the  deliberation  under 

•  Cf.  pp.  49,  107,  120,  124. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  15 

the  form  of  an  oscillation  in  space,  while  it  really  consists  in  a  dynamic 
progress  in  which  the  self  and  its  motives  .     .     .  are  in  a  constant 
state  of  becoming.    The  self,  infallible  when  it  affirms  its  immediate 
experiences,  feels  itself  free  and  says  so ;  but  as  soon  as  it  tries  to  explain 
its  freedom  to  itself,  it  no  longer  perceives  itself  except  by  a  kind  of 
refraction  through  space"  (p.  182).    "..     .     .     .  we  are  free  when  our 
acts  spring  from  our  whole  personality,  when  they  express  it"  (p.  172). 
"Freedom  .     .     .  is  not  absolute  .     .     .  it  admits  of  degrees  .     .     . 
many  live  .     .     .  and  die  without  having  known  true  freedom.  .     .     . 
the  most  authoritative  education  would  not  curtail  any  of  our  freedom 
if  it  only  imparted  to  us  ideas  and  feelings  capable  of  impregnating  the 
whole  soul"   (p.   166).      '    .     .     .we  are  rarely  free.   ...  To  act 
freely  is  to  .     .     .  get  back  into  pure  duration"  (p.  231).    "    . 
although  we  are  free  whenever  we  are  willing  to  get  back  into  ourselves, 
it  seldom  happens  that  we  are  willing"  (p.  240). 10 

The  Problem  of  Free- Will.  "  .  .  .  the  confusion  of  quality  and 
quantity  .  .  .  gives  rise  to  the  problem  of  free-will.  .  .  .  instead 
of  seeking  to  solve  the  question  we  shall  show  the  mistake  of  those 
who  ask  it"  (p.  74).  "defenders  and  opponents  of  free-will  agree  in 
holding  that  .  .  .  action  is  preceded  by  a  kind  of  mechanical  oscil- 
lation between  .  .  .  two  points  X  and  Y  .  .  . "  (p.  179).  But 
"do  not  ask  me  whether  the  self  .  .  .  could  or  could  not  choose  Y: 
I  should  answer  that  the  question  is  meaningless.  ...  To  ask  such 
a  question  is  to  admit  the  possibility  of  adequately  representing  time 
by  space  .  .  ."  (p.  180).  "  .  .  .  it  is  .  .  .  devoid  of  mean- 
ing to  ask:  Could"  an  "act  be  foreseen,  given  .  .  .  its  antecedents" 
(p.  189)?  *  .  .  .  when  we  ask  whether  a  future  action  could 
have  been  foreseen,  we  unwittingly  identify  that  time  with  which  we 
have  to  do  in  the  exact  sciences  .  .  .  with  real  duration,  whose 
so-called  quantity  is  really  a  quality  .  .  ."  (p.  197).  "In  whatever 
way  .  .  .  freedom  is  viewed,  it  can  not  be  denied  except  on  condi- 
tion of  identifying  time  with  space  .  .  ."  (p.  230).  "The  problem 
of  freedom  has  thus  sprung  from  a  misunderstanding  ...  it  has 
its  origin  in  the  illusion  through  which  we  confuse  succession  and 
simultaneity,  duration  and  extensity,  quality  and  quantity"  (p.  240). 
But:  "freedom  is  denounced  as  being  incompatible  with  .  .  .  the 
conservation  of  energy  .  .  ."  (p.  142)  and  although  "the  parallel- 
ism of  the  physical  and  psychical  series  has  been  proved  in  a  fairly 
large  number  of  cases  .  .  .to  extend  this  parallelism  to  the  series 
themselves  in  their  totality  is  to  settle  a  priori  the  problem  of  freedom  " 
(p.  147).  "...  while  the  material  point,  as  mechanics  under- 

10  Cf.  pp.  165,  168,  169,  170,  220,  229,  233,  237. 


16  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

stands  it,  remains  in  an  eternal  present,  the  past  is  a  reality  .  .  .for 
conscious  beings.  .  .  .  Such  being  the  case,  is  there  not  much  to 
be  said  for  the  hypothesis  of  a  conscious  force  or  free-will,  which, 
subject  to  the  action  of  time  and  storing  up  duration,  may  thereby 
escape  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy"  (p.  153)? 

The  Conservation  of  Energy.  (A  compendium  of  M.  Bergson's  argu- 
ment, in  his  own  words.)  "  .  .  .  freedom  is  denounced  as  being 
incompatible  with  the  .  .  .  conservation  of  energy.  .  .  .  We  shall 
show  that  .  .  .  physical  determinism,  involves  a  psychological 
hypothesis"  (p.  142).  "As  .  .  .  the  conservation  of  energy  has 
been  assumed  to  admit  of  no  exception,  there  is  not  an  atom,"  it  is 
supposed,  ".  .  .  whose  position  is  not  determined  by  the  . 
actions  which  the  other  atoms  exert  upon  it.  And  the  mathematician 
.  .  .  could  calculate  .  .  .  the  future  actions  of  the  person 
.  .  .  as  one  predicts  an  astronomical  phenomenon.  We  shall  not 
raise  any  difficulty  about  recognizing  that  this  conception  of  ... 
nervous  phenomena  .  .  .  is  a  natural  deduction  from  the  law  of 
the  conservation  of  energy.  .  .  .  but  ...  we  propose  to  show 
that  .  .  .  the  very  universality  of  the  principle  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy  can  not  be  admitted  except  in  virtue  of  some  psycho- 
logical hypothesis.  .  .  .  if  we  assumed  .  .  .  the  position  .  .  . 
of  each  atom  of  cerebral  matter  .  .  .  determined  at  every  moment 
of  time,  it  would  not  follow  that  our  psychic  life  is  subject  to  the  same 
necessity.  For  we  should  first  have  to  prove  that  a  strictly  deter- 
mined psychic  state  corresponds  to  a  definite  cerebral  state,  and  the 
proof  is  still  to  be  given  (p.  144).  .  .  .  But  .  .  .  we  do  not  prove 
and  we  shall  never  prove  by  any  reasoning  that  the  psychic  fact  is 
fatally  determined  by  the  molecular  movement.  .  .  .the  unvarying 
conjunction  of  the  two  terms  has  not  been  verified  .  .  .  except  in 
a  ...  limited  number  of  cases.  .  .  .  But  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand why  physical  determination  extends  this  conjunction  to  all 
possible  cases.  .  .  .  the  majority  of  our  actions  can  be  explained 
by  motives.  But  .  .  .  the  determinist,  .  .  .  led  astray  by  a  con- 
ception of  duration  ...  we  shall  criticise  later,  holds  that  the 
determination  of  conscious  states  by  one  another  is  absolute.  .  .  . 
It  seems  natural  that  this  .  .  .  approximate  determinism  should 
seek  support  from  the  same  mechanism  that  underlies  the  phenomena 
of  nature  (p.  147).  .  .  .  the  transaction  would  be  to  the  advantage 
both  of  psychological  determinism  .  .  .  and  of  physical  determi- 
nism, which  would  spread  over  everything.  .  .  .  The  physical  deter- 
minism reached  in  this  way  is  nothing  but  psychological  determinism, 
seeking  to  verify  itself  .  .  .  by  an  appeal  to  the  sciences  of  nature. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  17 

But  we  must  own  that  the  amount  of  freedom  left  .  .  .  after  com- 
plying with  the  .  .  .  conservation  of  energy  is  ...  limited 
(p.  149).  .  .  .  We  are  thus  led  to  inquire  whether  the  very  extension 
of  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy  to  all  bodies  in  nature 
does  not  involve  some  psychological  theory,  and  whether  the  scientist 
who  did  not  possess  .  .  .  any  prejudice  against  human  freedom 
would  think  of  setting  up  this  principle  as  a  universal  law  (p.  150). 

.  .  .  The  .  .  .  conservation  of  energy  certainly  seems  to  apply 
to  the  whole  range  of  psychico-chemical  phenomena.  But  .  .  .  the 
study  of  physiological  phenomena"  might  "reveal  .  :  .  some  new 

.  .  .  energy  which  may"  rebel  "against  calculation.  Physical 
science  would  not  thereby  lose  any  of  its  .  .  .  geometrical  rigor. 

.  .  .  Let  us  also  note  that  the  .  .  .  conservation  of  energy  can 
only  be  applied  to  a  system  of  which  the  points  .  .  .  can  return 
to  their  former  positions.  This  return  is  at  least  conceived  of  as 
possible  .  .  .  and  the  instinctive  .  .  .  belief  of  mankind  in  the 
conservation  of  a  fixed  quantity  ...  of  energy,  perhaps  has  its  root 
in  the  very  fact  that  inert  matter  does  not  seem  to  ...  preserve  any 
trace  of  past  time.  But  this  is  not  the  case  in  the  realm  of  life.  Here 

.  .  .  the  idea  of  putting  things  back  in  their  place  at  the  end  of  a 
certain  time  involves  a  kind  of  absurdity.  .  .  .  But  let  us  admit 
that  the  absurdity  is  a  mere  appearance  ...  at  least  it  will  be 
granted  that  the  hypothesis  of  a  turning  backwards  is  almost  meaning- 
less in  the  sphere  of  conscious  states.  .  .  .  the  past  is  a  reality 
perhaps  for  living  bodies,  and  certainly  for  conscious  beings  (p.  151). 

.  .  .  In  truth  it  is  not  a  wish  to  meet  the  requirements  of  positive 
science,  but  rather  a  psychological  mistake  which  has  caused  this 
abstract  principle  of  mechanics  to  be  set  up  as  a  universal  law  (p.  154). 

.  .  .  while  we  ought  to  say  (if  we  kept  aloof  from  all  presupposi- 
tions concerning  free-will)  that  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
governs  physical  phenomena  and  may,  one  day,  be  extended  to  all 
phenomena  if  psychological  facts  also  prove  favorable  to  it  .  .  .we 
lay  down  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy  as  a  law  which 
should  govern  all  phenomena  whatever.  .  .  .  Science,  properly  so- 
called,  has  therefore  nothing  to  do  with  all  this.  We  are  simply 
confronted  with  a  confusion  between  concrete  duration  and  abstract 
time.  .  .  .  In  a  word,  so-called  physical  determinism  is  reducible 
to  psychological  determinism  .  .  .  and  it  is  this  doctrine,  as  we 
hinted  at  first,  that  we  have  to  examine"  (p.  155). 

M.  Bergson  admits  (p.  149)  that  there  can  be  no  freedom  of  any 
significance  as  long  as  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy  is  presup- 
posed unmitigated,  but  does  little  to  mitigate  its  severity  in  the  argu- 


i8  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

ment  concentrated  above,  where  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of 
energy  is  ambiguously  identified  with  "physical  determinism,"  with 
the  "universality  of  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy,"  and 
with  "a  physical  determinism  spread  over  everything";  and  where 
the  subject-matter  of  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy  is  men- 
tioned as,  first,  "matter,"  then  "things,"  "phenomena,"  "bodies," 
and  at  last  "beings."  An  easy-going  reader  is  apt  to  pass  over 
the  ambiguity  of  this  argument  because  M.  Bergson  seeks  to 
reduce  the  hypothesis  of  "physical  determinism"  to  "psychological 
determinism,"  by  two  .sets  of  considerations  which,  as  they  are 
arranged  in  his  text,  distract  the  attention  of  the  reader  from  one 
another. 

Regarding  the  eleven  topics,  cited  antecedently  to  the  argument 
concerning  the  conservation  of  energy,  on  which  we  gave  examples 
of  M.  Bergson's  conflicting  statements,  it  will  be  seen  that  a  uniform 
principle  of  contradiction  obtains:  In  the  statements  which  we  quote 
first  under  each  topic  M.  Bergson  affirms  or  implies  either  that  quality 
and  quantity,  in  general  or  in  a  particular  aspect,  are  not  mingled  at 
all,  or  else  that  some  proposition  following  from  the  fact  of  their 
separation  is  valid; — at  this  point  of  his  various  contentions  the  "con- 
fusion of  quality  and  quantity"  is  treated  as  a  false  idea;  a  case  of 
confused  thinking,  in  the  sense  of  the  predication  of  an  attribute  of  a 
subject  from  which  it  is  absent.  But  this  first  attitude  of  mind  is 
modified  more  and  more  as  we  follow  the  list  of  M.  Bergson's  state- 
ments under  each  topic,  till  at  last  we  find  M.  Bergson  affirming  that 
quality  and  quantity  are  really  mingled  (or  stating  as  true  what  con- 
sists with  the  fact  of  their  mingling),  and  the  "confusion  of  quality 
and  quantity"  has  come  to  be  looked  on  as  an  actual  process  of 
mixing  or  pouring  together,  due  to  one  cause  or  another;  to  the  inevit- 
able interaction  of  mind  and  matter  in  common  experience,  the  influ- 
ence of  language,  the  requirements  of  social  life,  or  to  something  else. 

Perhaps  instead  of  describing  the  argument  of  Time  and  Free- Will 
as  a  system  of  contradictions  constructed  around  the  propositions 
that  the  confusion  of  quality  and  quantity  is  a  false  predication  and 
that  it  is  an  illegitimate  fact,  it  would  be  more  accurate  to  describe 
this  argument  as  a  mass  of  ambiguity  in  which  two  opposite  tenden- 
cies of  thought  are  manifest, — a  tendency  towards  the  assertion  that, 
for  theoretical  reasons,  quality  and  quantity  can  not  be  mingled  with 
one  another,  and  a  tendency  to  acknowledge  that  their  mingling  is 
actual.  The  elaborate  ambiguity  of  the  argument  of  Time  and  Free- 
Will  can  be  fully  comprehended  only  by  means  of  a  patient  study  of 
the  numerous  details  of  its  constitution,  but  we  must  give  a  few 


LOGIC     OF      BERGSONS      PHILOSOPHY  19 

further  indications  in  the  subject  before  passing  on  to  a  general  dis- 
cussion of  the  meaning  of  the  peculiarity  of  the  book. 

To  illustrate  the  ambiguity  anew  we  shall  take  the  topic  of  psychic 
intensity.  M.  Bergson,  we  said,  to  return  to  the  principles  of  our 
analysis,  is  convinced  that  the  mind  can  not  be  quantitative.  From 
this  he  concludes  that  there  can  not  be  any  more-and-less  of  quality 
manifested  in  mental  alteration.  But  what  passes  for  mental  change 
in  intensity:  the  progress,  for  example,  of  moods  from  higher  to 
lower  degrees  of  exhilaration  or  sadness,  or  the  appreciation  of  a 
progressive  increase  or  abatement  in  temperatures  or  pains,  is  so 
obviously  a  quantitative  alteration,  that  the  only  method  by  which 
it  is  possible  to  reconcile  the  observable  character  of  change  in  the 
immediate  with  the  supposition  that  there  can  be  no  psychical  magni- 
tude, is  directly  or  indirectly  to  subsume  that  part  of  change  in  the 
immediate  which  makes  it  describable  as  intensively  quantitative, 
under  the  material  division  of  the  world,  and  no  longer  under  the 
heading  of  mind.  Yet  to  go  the  full  length  of  this  re-classification 
explicitly  would  be  to  give  up  the  dualistic  premise  of  the  argument, 
according  to  which  the  immediate  is  mind,  and  matter  and  mind  are 
separate.  Consequently  the  status  of  the  material  of  M.  Bergson's 
contention  concerning  intensity  is  ambiguous.  The  quantitative  part 
of  the  intensity  may  be  treated  as  mental  or  as  material,  or  as  really 
mental  and  illegitimately  material,  or  as  really  material  and  illegiti- 
mately mental,  and  so  forth.  In  short,  the  subject-matter  of  M. 
Bergson's  argument  wavers  back  and  forth  across  the  line  of  division, 
in  dualism,  between  mind  and  matter. 

If  we  search  Chapter  I  of  Time  and  Free- Will  for  an  answer  to 
the  query:  Does  the  mind  exhibit  intensive  magnitude?  we  find  the 
following  uncertain  statements:  That  although  psychologists  ''see 
no  harm  in"  speaking  of  states  of  consciousness  as  intensive,  what 
they  say  "involves  an  important  problem"  (p.  i);  the  problem, 
namely,  why  intensity  can  be  "assimilated"  to  magnitude  (p.  2); 
for,  M.  Bergson  says,  common  sense  agrees  with  philosophers  in 
"setting  up"  intensity  as  a  magnitude  (p.  3);  although,  for  instance, 
"the  distinct  phases  in  the  progress  of  an  esthetic  feeling  .  .  . 
correspond  less  to  variations  of  degree  than  to  difference  of  state 
or  nature"  (p.  17).  "Though  the  intensity  of  ...  sensation  can 
not  be  defined  by  the  magnitude  of  its  cause,  there  undoubtedly 
exists  some  relation  between  these  two  terms"  (p.  20).  "Science 
.  .  .  tends  to  strengthen  the  illusion  of  common  sense  .  .  .  that 
a  purely  psychic  state  .  .  .  can  .  .  .  possess  magnitude"  (p.  21). 
"We  maintain  that  the  more  a  given  effort  seems  to  us  to  increase,  the 


20  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

greater  is  the  number  of  muscles  which  contract  in  sympathy  with  it, 
and  that  the  apparent  consciousness  of  a  greater  intensity  of  effort 
.  is  reducible  ...  to  the  perception  of  a  larger  surface  of 
body  .  .  .  affected"  (p.  24).  "When  you  press  your  lips  more 
and  more  tightly  against  one  another,  you  believe  that  you  are  experi- 
encing .  .  .  one  .  .  .  sensation  which  is  ...  increasing.  .  .  . 
Reflection  will  show  you  that  this  sensation  remains  identical,  but 
that  certain  muscles  of  ...  the  body  have  taken  part  in  the  opera- 
tion. You  felt  this  .  .  .  encroachment  .  .  .  which  is  .  .  .a 
change  of  quantity;  but  as  your  attention  was  concentrated  on  your 
closed  lips,  you  localized  the  increase  there  and  you  made  the  psychic 
force  there  expended,  into  a  magnitude,  although  it  possessed  no 
extensity"  (p.  25).  "I  can  picture  ...  a  nerve  transmitting  a 
pain  .  .  .  and  I  can  .  .  .  understand  that  stronger  or  weaker 
stimulations  influence  this  nerve  differently.  But  I  do  not  see  how 
these  differences  of  sensation  would  be  interpreted  by  our  conscious- 
ness as  differences  of  quantity  unless  we  connected  them  with  .  .  . 
reactions  that  usually  accompany  them.  .  .  .  Without  these  .  .  . 
reactions,  the  intensity  of  the  pain  would  be  ...  quality,  and  not 

.  .  .  magnitude"  (p.  37).  There  is  something  "in  common,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  magnitude,  between  a  physical  phenomenon  and 
a  state  of  consciousness  .  .  . "  (p.  34).  "When  it  is  said  that  an 
object  occupies  a  large  space  in  the  soul  .  .  .  the  reflective  con- 
sciousness .  .  .  will  assume  .  .  .  that  .  .  .  such  and  such  a 
desire  has  gone  up  a  scale  of  magnitude,  as  though  it  were  permissible 

.  .  .  to  speak  of  magnitude  where  there  is  neither  multiplicity  nor 
space"  (p.  9). 

If,  dissecting  the  ambiguity  of  these  statements,  we  ask  whether, 
according  to  M.  Bergson,  intensity  is  or  is  not  a  magnitude,  we  dis- 
cover that  intensity,  by  implication,  is  a  magnitude  (p.  i) ;  by  implica- 
tion, it  is  not  (p.  3).  Further,  M.  Bergson  writes  that  we  "experience 

.  .  .  an  analogous  impression"  in  the  case  of  both  intensity  and 
extensity  (or  magnitude)  (p.  3).  "In  the  idea  of  intensity  .  .  .we 
find  the  image  of  ...  something  virtually  extended.  .  .  .  We 
are  thus  led  to  believe  that  we  translate  the  intensive  into  the  exten- 
sive .  .  ."  (p.  4).  Intensity  of  effort  "seems  to  be  presented  imme- 
diately to  consciousness  under  the  form  of  quantity  or  at  least  of 
magnitude"  (p.  20).  A  "crude  conception  of  effort  plays  a  large  part 
in  our  belief  in  intensive  magnitudes"  (p.  21).  "To  sum  up  ... 
we  have  found  that  the  notion  of  intensity  consists  in  a  certain  esti- 
mate of  the  magnitude  of  the  cause  by  means  of  a  certain  quality  in 
the  effect;  it  is  .  .  .an  acquired  perception, "  or  "we  give  the  name 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY  21 

of  intensity  to  the  larger  or  smaller  number  of  simple  psychic  phe- 
nomena which  we  conjecture  to  be  involved  in  the  fundamental  state: 
it  is  no  longer  an  acquired  perception,  but  a  confused  perception" 
(p.  72).  In  the  next  chapter  M.  Bergson  remarks  that  "pure  dura- 
tion .  .  .  must  ...  be  reckoned  among  the  so-called  intensive 
magnitudes,  if  intensities  can  be  called  magnitudes  (p.  106)."  On 
pages  3,  5,  6,  7,  20,  25,  42,  43,  70,  185,  222,  intensity  is  subjective  and 
opposed  to  extensity ;  on  pages  48,  50,  54,  55,  57,  60,  145,  it  is  objective 
and  identified,  more  or  less,  with  extensity  itself. 

Pursuing  this  ambiguity  into  the  subject-matter  of  M.  Bergson's 
discussion,  in  the  plane  of  a  more  specific  description,  we  note  that  the 
subjects  to  which  M.  Bergson  ascribes  the  imperfectly  localized 
attribute  of  intensity  tend  to  lose  their  precise  position  in  his  dualistic 
theory.  The  discussion  on  page  5  might  make  one  surmise  that  the 
author  of  Time  and  Free-Will  considers  that  psychic  states  present 
an  objective  aspect,  since  he  seems  to  mention  the  "subjective  aspect" 
of  "psychic  states."  Movements,  though  commonly  supposed  objec- 
tive and  usually  treated  as  such  in  the  book  we  are  studying,  become 
more  or  less  subjective  at  several  points  in  its  argument;  we  have 
"conscious  movements"  (p.  26);  "organic  disturbances"  are  alto- 
gether unconscious  as  movements  (p.  32),  but  "future  automatic 
movements"  are  "likely  to  be  conscious  as  movements"  (pp.  34,  35). 
Effort  or  muscular  tension  is  at  once  subjective  and  objective  in  a 
vague  way  (pp.  9,  22,  29).  Sensations  are  subjective  by  definition 
(p.  i) ;  they  are  "peripheral"  (p.  26) ;  "peripheral  sensations"  "accom- 
pany psychic  states"  (p.  27);  "peripheral  sensations  are  substituted 
for  inner  states"  (p.  31);  and  furthermore  we  gather  that  there  are 
sensations  which  do  not  occupy  space,  and  others  which  do  (p.  32). 
Finally,  it  is  written  that  in  attention  "the  feeling  of  a  muscular 
contraction"  is  not  "a  purely  psychic  factor"  (p.  28);  and  that  in 
anger  organic  sensations  are  not  the  psychical  element  (p.  29). u 

In  contending  that  so-called  psychic  magnitude — psychic  intensity 
in  particular — is  spatial,  M.  Bergson  becomes  a  pure  experience 
philosopher,  after  a  fashion,  though  when  he  describes  the  presence 
of  space  in  the  mind,  or  of  the  mind  in  space,  it  is  as  though  the  con- 
junction were  illegitimate,  or  at  least  abnormal,  and  deserving  to  be 
discontinued  completely,  or — sometimes — eliminated  from  philosophy 
and  psychology,  with  the  concession  that  mind,  so  far  as  practical 
life  and  common  sense  are  concerned,  may  be  quantitative.  This 
explains,  within  the  supposition  of  our  analysis,  howM.  Bergson  conies 
to  make  a  class  of  remarkable  statements  which  we  exemplify  as 

"  Cf.  pp.  7.  30,  39.  47,  and  passim. 


22  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

follows:  "  .  .  .  if  we  hold  a  pin  in  our  right  hand  and  prick  our 
left  hand  more  and  more  .  .  .  we  .  .  .  feel  ...  a  tickling,  then 
a  touch  ...  a  prick  ...  a  pain  localized  at  a  point,  and  finally 
the  spreading  of  this  pain.  .  .  .  And  the  more  we  reflect  .  .  .  the 
more  clearly  we  shall  see  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  so  many 
qualitatively  distinct  sensations.  .  .  .  But  .  .  .  we  spoke  of  one 
.  .  .  sensation  which  spread  ...  of  one  prick  which  increased 
in  intensity.  The  reason  is  that,  without  noticing  it,  we  localized  in 
the  sensation  of  the  left  hand,  which  is  pricked,  the  progressive  effort 
of  the  right  hand,  which  pricks.  We  thus  introduced  the  cause  into 
the  effect,  and  unconsciously  interpreted  quality  as  quantity,  inten- 
sity as  magnitude"  (p.  42).  "The  magnitude  of  a  representative 
sensation  depends  on  the  cause  having  been  put  into  the  effect"  (p.  47). 
"We  confuse  the  feeling  which  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of  becoming, 
with  its  permanent  external  object,  and  especially  with  the  word 
which  expresses  this  object.  In  the  same  way  as  the  fleeting  duration 
of  our  ego  is  fixed  by  its  projection  in  homogeneous  space,  our  con- 
stantly changing  impressions,  wrapping  themselves  round  the  external 
object  which  is  their  cause,  take  on  its  definite  outlines  and  its  immo- 
bility" (p.  130).  "  .  .  .as  external  objects  .  .  .  are  more  impor- 
tant to  us  than  subjective  states  .  .  .  we  have  everything  to  gain 
by  objectifying  these  states,  by  introducing  into  them  .  .  .  the 
representation  of  their  external  cause.  And  the  more  our  knowledge 
increases,  the  more  we  perceive  the  extensive  behind  the  intensive, 
quantity  behind  quality,  the  more  also  we  tend  to  thrust  the  former 
into  the  latter,  and  to  treat  our  sensations  as  magnitudes.  Physics, 
whose  particular  function  it  is  to  calculate  the  external  cause  of  our 
internal  states  .  .  .  deliberately  confuses  them  with  their  cause. 
It  thus  encourages  and  even  exaggerates  the  mistake  which  common 
sense  makes  on  this  point.  The  moment  was  .  .  .  bound  to  come 
at  which  science,  familiarized  with  this  confusion  between  quality 
and  quantity,  between  sensation  and  stimulus,  should  seek  to  measure 
the  one  as  it  measures  the  other.  .  .  .  For  if  we  grant  that  one 
sensation  can  be  stronger  than  another,  and  that  this  inequality  is 
inherent  in  the  sensations  themselves,  independently  of  all  associa- 
tion of  ideas,  of  all  more  or  less  conscious  consideration  of  number 
and  space,  it  is  natural  to  ask  by  how  much  the  first  sensation  exceeds 
the  second,  and  to  set  up  a  quantitative  relation  between  their  inten- 
sities" (p.  70). 12 

M.  Bergson's  argument  on  intensity,  then,  is  an  elaboration  of  the 
two  propositions  that  quality  and  quantity  can  not  come  into  contact 

12  Cf  pp.  28,  30,  44,  47,  48,  SO,  54,  7O.  71. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  23 

with  one  another  or  be  mingled  together,  and  that  they  are  mingled 
together  by  an  encroachment  of  space  on  the  realm  of  the  psychic. 
The  above  citations  are  meant  to  mark  out  the  principal  developments 
of  this  original  ambiguity,  but — we  reiterate — its  complete  figure 
can  only  be  comprehended  by  a  study  of  Chapter  I  of  Time  and 
Free-Will,  page  by  page;  for  the  modification  of  nouns  that  carry  the 
suggestion  of  materiality  by  adjectives  which  are  ordinarily  thought 
of  as  referring  to  what  is  psychic,  and  vice  versa ;  the  description  of  the 
process  of  incursion  as  real  with  the  reality  of  illusions,  shadows, 
phantoms,  and  errors,  and  as  being  the  result  of  an  association  of 
ideas  in  which  ideas  turn  out  to  be  the  things,  sometimes  of  immediate 
experience,  sometimes  the  meanings  of  the  mind,  and  sometimes, 
again,  entities  half  way  between  meanings  and  mere  existences,  serve, 
along  with  a  variety  of  other  means,  to  sustain  the  fundamental 
ambiguity  in  M.  Bergson's  exposition  in  Chapter  I  of  Time  and 
Free-Will,  as  to  the  locus  of  intensity. 

Under  the  topic  of  intensity  we  thus  find  M.  Bergson's  ambiguity 
as  to  whether  mind  has  magnitude,  whether  quality  and  quantity  are 
confused  actually,  or  only  by  the  false  predication  of  intensity  and 
multiplicity  and  pure  space  of  the  psychic,  branching  out  in  a  number 
of  ways.  A  symmetrical  development  of  the  ambiguity  in  each  of  the 
dozen  topics  which  were  enumerated  in  illustration  of  the  difficulty 
encountered  by  M.  Bergson  in  his  attempt  to  reconcile  the  theory  that 
the  immediate  is  pure  quality  with  the  observable  nature  of  experi- 
ence, might  be  traced;  but  without  further  citations  we  proceed  to 
consider  the  meaning  of  the  contradictions  which  we  have  quoted  in 
substantiation  of  our  analysis. 

According  to  this  analysis  M.  Bergson  is  ambiguous  in  specifying 
what  features  of  immediate  experience  constitute  mind,  because, 
although  he  is  forced  to  ascribe  intensity  and  multiplicity  to  the  mate- 
rial division  of  the  world,  he  is  prevented  from  re-defining  intensity 
and  multiplicity  as  material  out  and  out,  not  only  by  the  obvious 
character  of  immediate  experience,  but  especially  by  the  danger  of 
converting  his  new  form  of  dualism  into  an  apparently  arbitrary 
doctrine,  which  it  would  become  if  there  were  no  illusion  to  be  dis- 
pelled as  to  the  nature  of  immediate  experience;  for  it  is  precisely  by 
showing  that  the  immediate  is  spatial  illegitimately  that  M.  Bergson 
expects  to  point  out  the  way  to  a  philosophical  reform,  and  to  a  valua- 
ble method  in  psychology.  Indeed,  if  M.  Bergson  rejected  intensity 
and  multiplicity  utterly  from  the  immediate,  the  subject-matter  of 
psychological  investigation  would  become  unrecognizable  to  common 
sense,  incapable  of  definition,  and  incommensurable  with  language  or 


24  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

any  other  systems  of  signs.  This  explains  why  M.  Bergson  is 
ambiguous  as  to  the  status  in  dualism  of  multiplicity  and  intensity, 
and  why  he  'takes  advantage  of  dualism's  ill-localized  inextensive 
immediate  to  harbor  the  imperfectly  identified  mind  of  his  novel 
psychology. 

But  why  should  the  combination  of  the  fact  of  uniqueness  with  the 
dualistic  hypothesis,  which  was  the  simplest  form  of  our  analysis  of 
Time  and  Free-Will,  grow  into  the  contradictory  propositions:  that 
mind  is  pure  quality — something  not  tangible  enough  to  provide  a 
subject-matter  for  psychological  science;  and  that  mind,  contrary  to 
the  premises  of  dualism,  is  extended  by  the  very  possession  of  multi- 
plicity and  intensity? 

The  answer  to  this  question  can  be  made  to  emerge  from  a  compari- 
son of  the  epistemological  aspects  of  M.  Bergson's  original  premises. 
In  the  first  place,  in  so  far  as  the  theory  of  knowledge  is  concerned', 
dualism  is  primarily  a  device  for  palliating  the  difficulties  of  the 
resemblance  theory  of  cognition.  In  this  theory  of  knowledge  an 
idea  is  true  of  its  object  by  the  resemblance  it  bears  to  that  object; 
but  since  no  resemblance  short  of  absolute  coincidence  of  attributes, 
or  identity,  appears  to  be  perfect,  absolute  truth  would  seem  to  be 
found  only  where  the  idea  is  the  same  as  the  object.  Following  this 
train  of  thought  further,  it  seems  in  addition  that  if  an  absolutely  true 
idea  coincides  with  its  object,  every  object  must  be  the  absolutely 
true  idea  of  itself.  But  in  this  case  the  possibility  of  error  would  be 
excluded,  and  in  order  to  find  some  sort  of  lodging  for  error,  object 
and  idea  would  once  more  necessarily  have  to  be  distinguished  and 
placed  apart.  The  resemblance  theory  of  knowledge,  then,  is  threat- 
ened by  the  paradoxes  that  if  idea  and  object  are  not  different  there 
can  be  no  error;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  as  long  as  idea  and  object 
are  different  at  all,  genuine  truth  will  appear  precluded.  Now,  as  was 
said,  dualism,  epistemologically  speaking,  is  an  arrangement  for  ward- 
ing off  these  complementary  paradoxes. 

Dualism  provides  that  idea  and  object  shall  absolutely  resemble 
each  other  and  yet  be  different,  by  means  of  the  doctrine  that  mind 
corresponds  to  matter  absolutely,  though  mind  and  matter  remain 
distinct,  since  the  one  is  unextended,  the  other  extended.  The  most 
significant  feature  of  dualism,  then,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
theory  of  knowledge,  if  our  exposition  is  correct,  is  the  doctrine  of 
correspondence;  and  we  noted  at  the  commencement  of  this  analysis 
how  the  fact  of  uniqueness,  when  combined  with  dualism,  acted  to 
modify  the  correspondence  aspect  of  this  theory.  We  must  look  for 
the  source  of  M.  Bergson's  ambiguities  and  contradictions,  conse- 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY  25 

quently,  in  the  relation  of  the  doctrine  of  correspondence  to  the 
epistemological  significance  of  the  fact  of  uniqueness. 

The  fact  of  uniqueness  was  described  at  the  opening  of  our  analysis 
as  the  fact  that  associationistic  psychology  is  incompetent  to  describe 
the  subject-matter  of  psychology  accurately  in  terms  of  ideas  or  mental 
atoms  or  states  of  mind,  since  these  terms  are  abstract  whereas  the 
world  that  surrounds  and  impresses  us  at  any  particular  time  is  indi- 
vidual and  unanalyzed  into  psychological  elements.  In  other  words, 
the  fact  of  uniqueness  is  the  fact  that  since  science  is  abstract  and  its 
subject-matter  concrete,  a  discrepancy  inevitably  exists  between 
scientific  knowledge  and  its  object.  The  factual  premise  of  M.  Berg- 
son's  fundamental  logic  was  thus  that  a  true  idea  is  in  some  measure 
different  from  its  object.  But  the  fact  that  psychology  proceeds  by 
the  method  of  abstractions  meant  to  M.  Bergson's  mind  not  that  the 
resemblance  theory  of  knowledge  is  at  fault,  but  that  abstract 
psychology  is  not  genuinely  scientific.  He  reasoned  that  if  psychology 
does  not  absolutely  reproduce  its  subject-matter,  psychology  must 
be  false,  from  the  premise  that  true  knowledge  resembles  its  object. 
The  fact,  then,  which  M.  Bergson  set  out  to  combine  with  the  dualistic 
hypothesis,  was  that  a  true  idea  is  different  from  its  object;  but 
this  fact  went  along  in  his  mind  with  the  premise  that  an  idea  which 
is  not  identical  with  its  object  can  not  really  be  true. 

We  have,  then,  the  correspondence  feature  of  dualism,  which  pre- 
serves in  a  kind  of  solution  the  contradictory  notions  that  a  true  idea 
is  absolutely  like  and  yet  different  from  its  object,  united  painstak- 
ingly with  the  fact  that  true  ideas  are  decidedly  unlike  their  objects, 
and  with  the  confident  assumption  that  ideas  are  absolutely  similar 
to  objects  of  which  they  constitute  true  knowledge.  M.  Bergson's 
fact,  as  may  be  said,  precipitates  the  ambiguity  of  the  correspondence 
feature  of  dualism;  it  acts  to  diminish  the  correspondence  aspect  of 
the  dualistic  theory,  and  to  lessen  the  theoretical  resemblance  of  mind 
to  matter.  But  as  M.  Bergson  assumes  that  knowledge  should  be 
quite  like  its  object,  his  development  of  the  consequences  of  the  view 
that  mind  must  be  dissimilar  to  matter  is  complicated  and  contra- 
dicted by  the  effects  of  his  epistemological  belief  that  they  should  be 
alike,  and  by  the  fact  that  their  likeness  is  an  empirical  truth.  In  this 
way  the  contradictions  and  ambiguities  illustrated  under  the  dozen 
principal  heads  of  our  analysis  are  explained. 

The  epistemological  contradiction  of  the  argument  proceeds  natu- 
rally into  the  propositions  that  immediate  experience  is  the  truth  of 
itself;  and  that  it  is  the  falsehood  or  merely  approximate  truth  of 
something  else  lying  beyond  or  within.  In  the  first  case  immediacy 


26  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

is  supposed  to  be  epistemologically  sufficient  to  itself  (p.  183),  know- 
ing is  seeing  (pp.  197,  198)  or  acting  (pp.  187,  220,  230),  the  very 
attempt  to  inquire  or  discuss  the  true  nature  of  mind  misleads  (pp.  183, 
221),  and  language  (p.  130)  and  conception  (p.  236)  are  a  source  of 
illusions  since  they  detach  speculative  curiosity  from  immediate  con- 
tact with  its  subject-matter.  This  attitude  in  the  theory  of  knowledge 
is  not  removed,  by  very  much,  from  philosophical  skepticism,  since 
if  each  thing  is  the  true  idea  of  itself,  truth  as  distinguished  from  error 
is  in  danger  of  vanishing.  In  the  second  case,  where  M.  Bergson 
regards  immediate  experience  as  an  approximation  to  something  more 
true  than  itself,  his  estimate  of  the  value  of  conception  is  reversed; 
psychological  truth  is  to  be  got  by  inquiry,  discussion,  analysis,  and 
abstraction;  and  language  is  not  regarded  as  misleading  generically.12 
What  M.  Bergson  thinks  that  he  proves  in  Time  and  Free-Will  is 
very  different,  in  our  opinion,  consequently,  from  what  he  proves  in 
reality.  He  thinks  he  proves  that  what  passes  for  mind  in  science  and 
common  sense  is,  strictly  speaking,  not  mind  at  all,  since  he  believes 
that  mental  intensity  and  multiplicity  result  from  an  incursion  of 
space  into  mind,  and  from  a  projection  of  mind  into  space.  Mind 
comes  to  mean  in  his  theory  whatever  immediate  experience  may  be, 
minus  not  only  extension,  but  intensity  and  multiplicity  as  well,  and 
the  empirical  philosopher's  pure  experience,  or  immediate  datum  of 
consciousness,  is  elaborately  explained  in  Time  and  Free-Will  as  an 
illegitimate  pouring  together,  for  unphilosophical  reasons — for  the 
sake  of  language,  the  saving  of  time,  the  requirements  of  life,  the 
convenience  of  practise,  or  the  habits  of  the  intellect — of  elements 
that  should,  by  hypothesis,  be  apart.  In  so  far,  however,  as  M. 
Bergson  tries  to  describe  a  process  of  confusion  of  mind  and  quantity, 
he  gives  up  his  dualistic  premise;  and  his  accounts  of  the  mingling  of 
quality  and  quantity,  in  terms  of  confusion,  incursion,  projection, 
assimilation,  translation,  exchange,  imitation,  osmosis,  and  so  forth, 
are  not  evidence  that  dualism  requires  reformation,  but  evidence  fatal 
to  dualism  itself. 

It  has  been  shown  that  there  are  grave  contradictions  in  M.  Berg- 
son's  exposition  of  all  the  capital  topics  treated  in  Time  and  Free-Will, 
and  that  these  contradictions  can  be  brought  under  the  ambiguity  of 
a  theory  regarding  the  relation  of  quantity  to  quality.  Incidentally 
it  has  been  shown  that  the  interrelation  of  these  contradictions  points 
to  their  probable  origin  in  an  attempt  to  combine  what  we  called  the 
fact  of  uniqueness  with  the  dualistic  hypothesis,  turning  on  a  revision 

12  See  Time  and  Free-Witt,  passim. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  27 

of  the  correspondence  theory.  Supposing  such  an  attempt  to  have 
been  the  underlying  principle  of  M.  Bergson's  work,  not  only  the 
argument,  but  the  extraordinary  arrangement  of  the  elements  of  the 
argument,  the  arbitrary  nature  of  these  elements,  and  even  some  of 
the  literary  characteristics  of  M.  Bergson's  text,  are  rendered  explica- 
ble. Were  we  interested  primarily  in  the  argument  of  Time  and  Free- 
Will,  as  a  whole,  we  should  try  to  confirm  our  view  that  the  doctrine 
of  correspondence  occupies  a  cardinal  position  therein,  by  showing  the 
doctrine  of  parallelism,  which  is  a  ramification  of  the  correspondence 
theory,  to  have  engaged  M.  Bergson's  mind  prior  and  subsequent  to 
the  writing  of  Time  and  Free-Will,  quoting  relevant  passages  from  his 
publications  as  follows:  Extraits  de  Lucrece,  Introduction;  Matter  and 
Memory,  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Fran$aise  de  Philosophic,  Volumes  I 
and  5;  Le  Paralogism  Psycho-Physiologique,  Revue  de  Metaphysique 
et  de  Morale,  Volume  12.  Seeing,  however,  that  our  study  of  the 
argument  of  Time  and  Free-Will  is  for  the  sake  of  the  light  it  sheds  on 
M.  Bergson's  formulation  and  renunciation  of  a  theory  of  mind,  we 
shall  proceed  forthwith  to  the  special  question  of  M.  Bergson's 
psychology. 

M-  Bergson  defines  the  principle  of  his  psychology,  in  Time  and 
Free-Will  (Conclusion),  as  a  reversal  of  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  per- 
ception, proposing  the  idea  that  inasmuch  as  the  forms  through  which 
we  know  the  material  world  are  constantly  employed  by  our  minds, 
since  the  external  world  is  vitally  important  to  ourselves,  we  are  likely, 
when  we  turn  our  attention  inwards,  to  apprehend  the  soul  in  material 
terms.  To  perceive  the  soul — the  object  of  psychology — as  it  is  really, 
in  his  idea,  consequently,  we  must  subtract  from  our  ordinary  experi- 
ence of  mind  what  it  has  in  common  with  matter,  and  this  demateriali- 
zation  of  ordinary  experience  will  reveal  the  veritable  nature  of  the 
soul  to  psychology.  The  principle  of  M.  Bergson's  doctrine,  therefore, 
in  his  own  terms,  is  that  mind  is  not  whatever  matter  may  be. 

In  the  preceding  analysis  of  Time  and  Free-Will  we  supposed  M. 
Bergson  to  conclude  from  the  fact  of  the  interpenetration  of  elements 
in  immediate  experience,  interpreted  with  the  aid  of  the  dualistic 
hypothesis,  that  matter  and  mind,  rightly  speaking,  have  nothing  in 
common,  and  it  will  be  well  to  mention  why  the  results  of  a  combina- 
tion of  these  premises  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  the  Kantian  phil- 
osophy. 

The  epistemological  upshot  of  M.  Bergson's  premises  was  an  ambigu- 
ity containing  the  contrary  views  that  immediate  experience  is  true 
in  its  own  right  by  itself,  and  that  it  is  the  falsehood  of  something 


28  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

else  lying  beyond  which  it  hides.  This  ambiguity  we  traced  to  the 
premises  themselves:  The  notion  that  absolute  truth  is  the  limiting 
case  of  increasing  resemblance — that  whatever  is,  is  the  truth  of  itself — 
and  that  object  and  idea  differ  permanently  in  order  that  error  may 
find  lodgment  between  the  two  terms  we  discovered  suspended  in 
solution  in  the  doctrine  of  correspondence,  and  inhering  separately, 
the  one  in  M.  Bergson's  factual  premise,  the  other  in  his  assumption 
concerning  the  significance  of  that  fact  itself.  Be  it  now  noted  that 
the  same  sort  of  ambiguity  is  embodied  in  the  scheme  of  the  Kantian 
philosophy. 

In  this  scheme  to  know  is  to  apprehend  a  material  by  an  act  of  the 
mind  which  makes  its  object  knowable  by  knowing  it.  If  we  take  this 
formula  in  one  of  its  phases  it  seems  as  if,  since  what  we  know  can  only 
come  to  us  through  the  forms  of  knowledge,  we  must  know  completely 
whatever  is  known  at  all,  and  as  if,  for  this  reason,  we  could  never 
fall  into  error;  it  seems,  in  other  words,  as  if  the  experience  of  which 
we  become  aware  must  have  been  perfectly  shaped  by  the  forms  of 
the  mind  before  or  simultaneously  with  the  event  of  our  awareness, 
as  if  knowledge,  that  is,  were  the  given  structure  of  experience,  and 
therefore  as*f  the  phenomenal  world  were  impervious  to  error.  To 
make  room  for  error  in  his  scheme  Kant  is  forced  to  move  experience 
downwards  from  its  position  above  the  laws  of  the  mind  towards  the 
things-in-themselves;  in  so  far  as  experience  moves  in  this  direction 
in  the  Kantian  scheme  it  loses  its  organization  and  shape  and  grows 
pervious  to  error.  Thus  the  position  of  experience  is  indeterminate  in 
Kant's  philosophy  for  the  same  reason  that  dualism  contends  at  once, 
by  means  of  the  correspondence  theory,  that  matter  and  mind  are 
absolutely  similar  to  one  another  and  different  nevertheless.  Hence 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  explaining  why  M.  Bergson  can  express  his 
views  in  a  vocabulary  of  Kantian  ideas,  although  he  may  have  reached 
his  conclusions  unaffected  by  direct  preoccupation  with  the  distinc- 
tions of  the  philosophy  of  Kant.  In  either  case,  whether  M.  Bergson 
was  originally  convinced  that  mind  must  be  opposite  in  nature  to 
matter  because  our  habits  of  apprehending  matter  appeared  to  him 
likely,  a  priori,  to  vitiate  the  perception  of  inner  experience ;  or  whether 
he  came  to  this  conviction  because  it  inevitably  grew  out  of  the  com- 
bination of  the  fact  of  uniqueness  with  the  theory  of  dualism — the 
fact  remains  that,  according  to  the  fundamental  principle  of  his  psy- 
chology, mind  must  differ  from  matter  in  every  respect. 

The  premises  out  of  which  M.  Bergson  undertakes  to  develop  a 
doctrine  of  mind  are,  therefore,  simply  that  mind  is  a  concrete  unique 
interpenetration  of  elements  (by  observation),  and  that  mind  is  the 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  29 

reverse  of  whatever  matter  may  be  (by  deduction).  Being  the  oppo- 
site of  what  matter  is,  it  may  be  said  at  length  that  mind  is  without 
any  magnitude — without  intensity,  without  multiplicity,  and  without 
repetition,  since  if  it  manifested  recurrent  likenesses  it  would  be  quan- 
titative in  two  or  more  ways.  Mind,  therefore,  can  not  grow  or 
diminish,  be  multiple,  exist  in  space  or  in  time  (conceived  as  a  homo- 
geneity or  dimension),  nor  can  mind  be  caused  in  the  sense  of  exhibit- 
ing regular  sequences.  Finally  mind  can  not  be  described  by  means 
of  abstractions  nor  depicted  in  words.  Now  what  can  M.  Bergson  do 
with  this  knowledge  concerning  the  mind? 

Obviously,  it  will  enable  him  to  assail  with  effect  the  traditional 
teachings  of  psychology;  to  dispose  of  psychophysics,  associationism, 
and  determinism,  since  in  part  these  doctrines  stand  on  the  theoretical 
foundation  of  his  own  deduction ;  and  to  disprove  several  other  much- 
cherished  doctrines  besides;  but  the  more  he  urges  his  attack  against 
the  traditional  psychology  the  clearer  it  must  become  that  his  own 
novel  psychology  is  not  a  scientific  doctrine  at  all,  since  it  admits,  in 
its  logical  form,  that  mind  is  ineffable  and  the  attempt  to  explain  the 
nature  of  mind  not  only  foredoomed  to  failure,  but  positively  perni- 
cious. At  this  pass  M.  Bergson's  novel  psychology  becomes  a  regimen 
of  life,  a  rule  of  freedom,  and  a  prescription  for  looking  at  the  imme- 
diate in  a  particular  way  in  order  thoroughly  to  see  the  interpenetra- 
tion  of  elements  there,  with  which  he  set  out;  not  the  interpenetration, 
it  is  true,  as  a  confluence  precisely,  for  M.  Bergson's  deduction  cur- 
tails most  seriously  the  primary  fact  that  gave  it  a  start,  and  he  is 
forced  by  his  logic  to  affirm  that  the  real  immediate  is  not  that  simple 
interpenetration  of  which,  for  example,  we  have  a  description  in 
William  James's  Stream  of  Thought,  but  an  interpenetration  of  ele- 
ments that  are  not  distinct,  in  a  medium  that  is  not  continuous.  From 
the  fact  that  the  deduction  infringes  his  original  observation  we  shall 
now  go  on  to  note  why  M.  Bergson  relinquishes  his  psychology. 

He  relinquishes  his  psychology,  in  the  first  place,  because  he  has 
made  the  principle  of  his  doctrine  the  assumption  that  science  must 
reproduce  whatever  there  is  in  its  subject-matter,  and — since  abstract 
terms  are  necessarily  discrepant  from  what  is  concrete — he  assumed  in 
this  way  that  the  very  abstractness  of  science  is  unscientific.  But 
without  some  use  of  abstraction  M.  Bergson  would  be  unable  to  make 
his  ideas  explicit;  unable,  perhaps,  to  have  any  ideas  in  the  sense  of 
meanings,  and  mind  in  the  literal  significance  of  his  novel  psychology 
could  be  neither  generalized  nor  described.  He  abdicates  his  psychol- 
ogy, in  the  second  place,  because  from  his  deduction  he  acquires  a 
definition  telling  merely  what  mind  is  not;  and  for  the  purpose  of 


30  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

constructing  a  positive  doctrine  it  is  necessary  to  alter  this  negative 
proposition  concerning  the  mind  into  propositions  with  a  tangible 
content.  He  is  assured  deductively  that  mind  is  not  intensive  and 
not  multiple,  but  in  disproving  the  intensity  and  multiplicity  of  mind 
his  demonstration  becomes  a  contention  that  since  mind  is  not  inten- 
sive it  is  discontinuous,  and  since  it  is  not  multiple  it  must  be  continu- 
ous in  its  change. 

We  have  here  the  reasons  for  M.  Bergson's  abdication  of  his  novel 
theory  that  mind  is  really  mere  quality  or  pure  heterogeneity.  This 
abdication  results  in  a  number  of  what  may  be  called  longitudinal 
contradictions,  since  M.  Bergson  is  required  to  modulate  each  one  of 
his  contentions:  that  mind  is  non-intensive,  non-multiple,  non-divisi- 
ble, temporally  non-dimensional,  and  so  forth — into  its  opposite;  as 
has  been  shown  in  the  preliminary  analysis,  the  relevance  of  each  one 
of  the  topics  of  contradiction  illustrated  above  thus  being  direct  in 
the  matter  of  our  special  concern  in  this  dissertation.  The  abdication 
results  in,  and  can  be  demonstrated  by,  as  well,  a  further  series  of 
contradictions  which  may  be  described  as  transverse ;  for  not  only  does 
each  line  of  M.  Bergson's  argument  conflict  with  itself,  but  the  several 
lines  conflict  with  each  other — since  in  permitting  his  negative  proposi- 
tions concerning  the  mind  to  take  on  their  colloquial  or  conveniently 
opposite  positive  significance,  M.  Bergson  comes  to  maintain  at  once 
that  mind  is  continuous  and  discontinuous,  and  its  alteration  discon- 
tinuous and  continuous. 

It  seems  improbable  that  the  underlying  argument  of  Time  and 
Free-Will  has  been  manifest  to  a  great  many  of  its  readers,  since 
M.  Bergson  is  almost  universally  regarded  as  an  unequivocal  champion 
of  the  continuity  of  immediate  experience,  though  the  argument  of 
the  first  chapter  of  his  earliest  book  is  meaningless  in  itself  and  in 
relation  to  the  following  chapters,  except  as  an  attempt  to  demon- 
strate that  states  of  consciousness  can  not  increase  or  diminish  con- 
tinuously. The  contention  to  this  effect  is,  moreover,  clearly  made  in 
many  passages.  "...  although,"  says  M.  Bergson  (p.  57),  in 
discussing  the  growing  intensity  of  a  luminous  source,  "the  extensive 
cause  varies  continuously,  the  changes  in  the  sensation  of  color  are 
discontinuous."  '  .  the  successive  shades  of  gray  produced 

by  a  continuous  decrease  of  illumination  are  discontinuous,  as  being 
qualities"  (p.  58).  "  .  .  .  sensation  varies  by  sudden  jumps  while 
the  stimulus  increases  continuously  (p.  64)."  "Assume  that  I  experi- 
ence a  sensation  S,  and  that,  increasing  the  stimulus  continuously,  I 
perceive  this  increase  after  a  certain  time  ...  I  am  now  notified 
of  the  increase  of  the  cause;  but  why  call  this  notification  an  arith- 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  31 

metical  difference?  ...  It  could  only  be  called  an  arithmetical 
difference  if  I  were  conscious  .  .  .  of  an  interval  between  S  and  S' 
...  By  giving  this  transition  a  name  .  .  .  you  make  it  .... 
a  reality  and  ...  a  quantity  .  .  .  Now  you  are  not  only  unable  to 
explain  in  what  sense  this  transition  is  a  quantity,  but  reflection  will 
show  you  that  it  is  not  even  a  reality ;  the  only  realities  are  the  states 
S  and  S'  .  .  ."  (p.  65). 13  "  .  .  .  the  decreasing  intensities  of 
white  light  illuminating  a  given  surface  would  appear  to  an  unpreju- 
diced consciousness  as  so  many  different  shades,  not  unlike  the  vari- 
ous colors  of  the  spectrum"  (p.  54).  "Ce  qui  le  prouve  bien,  c'est  que 
le  changement  n'est  pas  continu  dans  la  sensation  comme  dans  sa 
cause  exterieure.  .  .  .  '  (p.  40  of  the  French  text.) 

The  termination  of  the  last  quotation  is  given  in  French  because 
in  translation  the  sense  of  the  original  has  been  reversed.  This  takes 
us  to  the  subject  of  the  disparities  between  the  English  and  French 
editions  of  Time  and  Free-Will,  which  illuminate  to  a  considerable 
degree  the  matter  we  are  discussing.14 

The  doctrine  of  Time  and  Free-Will  has  been  viewed  throughout 
the  course  of  our  preliminary  analysis  as  a  complicated  deduction 
unfolding  into  the  contentions,  among  a  number  of  others,  that  imme- 
diate experience  is  really  continuous  and  discontinuous.  At  first,  it 
appears,  M.  Bergson  was  inclined  to  lay  more  emphasis  on  the  former 
of  these  contradictory  contentions,  and  this  inclination  was,  as  it 
seems,  strengthened  in  the  progress  of  his  later  writings  not  only  by 
the  attempt  to  avoid  contradiction,  which  would  have  encouraged 
increasingly  whichever  inclination  had  first  been  preferred,  but  by 
other  influences  within  and  without  the  field  of  M.  Bergson's  own 
speculation.  Without  this  field,  but  acting  upon  it,  was  the  influence 
of  William  James's  chapter  in  The  Principles  of  Psychology  on  "The 
Stream  of  Thought";  and  the  fact  that  William  James — under  whose 
auspices  the  philosophy  of  M.  Bergson  first  grew  familiar  to  many 
readers  of  English — was  interested  largely  in  the  phase  of  that  phi- 
losophy which  assisted  the  vindication  of  the  continuity  of  immediate 
experience.  The  English-reading  public  has  possibly  overestimated 
M.  Bergson's  interest  in  the  contention  that  immediate  experience  is 
continuous,  being  far  more  than  M.  Bergson  taken  with  the  idea  that 
if  the  immediate  is  not  made  up  of  discrete  parts,  no  "trans-empirical 

13  Cf.  especially  pp.  68,  69. 

14  The  disparities  between  Les  Donnees  Immediates  de  la  Conscience  and  Time  and  Free-Will  are  so 
marked  in  a  good  many  passages  that  we  suppose  they  must  exhibit  the  effect  of  M.  Bergson's  revision. 
The  translator  writes  in  his  Preface  to  Time  and  Free-Will.    "In  making  the  following  translation  of 

.     .     .  (the)  Essai  sur  les  Donnees  Immediates  de  la  Conscience   I  have  had  the  great  advantage  of 
.     .     .  (M.  Bergson's)  cooperation  at  every  stage  ..." 


32  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS      PHILOSOPHY 

connective  tissue"  will  be  required  to  join  these  parts  to  each  other. 
At  any  rate,  the  view  that  the  mind  is  ineffable  and  continuous  and 
discontinuous — with  which,  on  the  only  supposition  that  renders  the 
arguments  of  Time  and  Free-Will  comprehensible,  M.  Bergson,  as  we 
believe,  proceeded — is  more  clearly  presented  in  Les  Donnees  Imme- 
diates  de  la  Conscience  than  in  the  English  version  of  that  work,  and 
the  disparities  between  the  original  and  translation,  which  are  too 
numerous  to  have  been  the  effect  of  an  accident,  fall  in  harmoniously 
with  the  explanations  advanced  in  this  dissertation  concerning  the 
significance  of  M.  Bergson's  epistemology. 

For  example,  in  Les  Donnees  Immediates  de  la  Conscience  (p.  80) 
M.  Bergson  describes  pure  duration,  which  is  the  same  as  pure  mind 
or  the  unvitiated  datum  of  immediate  consciousness,  as  an 
indistincte  multiplicity  with  no  relation  to  number;  in  Time  and  Free- 
Will  (p.  105)  the  word  corresponding  to  "indistincte"  is  "continuous," 
which  converts  the  negative  term  into  a  term  of  positive  significance. 
Here  the  English  version,  more  than  the  French,  departs  from  the 
original  contention,  arising  from  M.  Bergson's  premises,  that  mind  is 
neither  continuous  nor  discontinuous.  Later  in  the  French  edition  (p.  91) 
pure  duration  is  again  defined  to  be  "heterog&ne"  and  " indistincte" \ 
but  the  corresponding  definition  in  English  (p.  120)  is  "heterogene- 
ous" and  "continuous";  and  again,  in  English  (p.  238,  note),  the  word 
"continuous"  is  used  to  translate  "indistincte"  modifying  " duree" 
(French,  p.  183,  note).  Similarly,  since — in  so  far  as  M.  Bergson 
departs  from  the  fundamental  logic  of  his  position  he  conceives  of 
the  "confusion"  of  quality  with  quantity  as  being  a  real  process  of 
incursion  or  osmosis  or  whatever,  and  of  the  falsity  of  the  confusion 
as  being  an  illegitimate  association  of  ideas  in  which  the  ideas  are 
mere  existences  more  than  meanings — we  find  that  whereas  M.  Berg- 
son, in  French  (p.  55),  originally  spoke  of  this  confusion  as  corrupting 
our  "representation"  of  change;  in  English  (p.  74)  it  is  our  "feeling" 
of  change  which  he  describes  as  corrupted.  In  the  same  manner  the 
real  self  is  said  to  be  reached  by  "une  reflexion  approfondie"  in  Les 
Donnees  Immediates  de  la  Conscience  (p.  178);  but  in  the  English 
translation  (p.  231)  by  a  "deep  introspection";  and  past  states  of  the 
mind  which  "represent"  phases  of  our  real  duration  in  French  (pp.  183- 
184),  "are"  these  phases  in  English  (p.  239). 15 

To  sum  up:  M.  Bergson  attempts  to  establish  an  anti-material 
psychology  by  defining  the  mind  as  non-quantitative,  non-repetitious, 

15  For  other  alterations  explicable  analogously  see  Time  and  Free-Will,  pp.  xix,  6,  12,  26,  77,87,  93, 
lot,  128,  139,  142,  164,  167,  183. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  33 

and  undetermined.  But  in  adhering  to  the  terms  of  this  definition  he 
finds  that  his  anti-material  mind  is  not  amenable  to  investigation  by 
means  of  abstractions  nor  commensurable  with  words — that  his  psy- 
chology is  a  method  of  intuition  or  behavior;  not  a  doctrine  that  can 
be  formulated  or  communicated;  not  a  natural  science.  From  this 
skeptical  position  M.  Bergson  recedes  by  dividing  the  contention  that 
mind  is  non-quantitative  into  the  contentions  that  mind  is  non- 
multiple  and  non-intensive,  altering  these  separately  into  the  con- 
tentions that  mind  is  continuous  and  discontinuous,  and  palliating 
the  contradiction  as  best  he  is  able.  He  alters  the  contention  that 
mind  is  non-repetitious  into  the  statements  that  it  is  heterogeneous 
in  its  depths  or  on  critical  occasions.  The  contention  that  it  is  unde- 
termined is  modified  into  the  view  that  mind  is  probably  or  possibly 
uncaused,  or  uncaused  in  a  certain  sense,  aspect,  or  manner. 

From  this  attempt  to  formulate  a  science  by  adding  to  descriptions 
of  immediate  experience  abstract  statements  as  to  what  a  true  science 
of  immediate  experience  can  not  be,  altered  by  roundabout  methods 
into  contradictory  propositions  as  to  what  the  real  immediate  must 
be,  M.  Bergson  emerges  with  his  epistemological  convictions  unmodi- 
fied. We  have  next  to  observe  the  repetition  in  Matter  and  Memory 
of  this  attempt  to  formulate  a  science  in  terms  of  epistemological 
objections  to  the  attributes  which  natural  science  is  actually  found  to 
possess. 


II 

(i)    MATTER  AND   MEMORY 

The  chiefly  significant  difference  between  the  arrangement  of  M. 
Bergson's  assumptions  and  observations  in  Time  and  Free-Will  and 
Matter  and  Memory  is  that  he  accepts  the  extension  of  immediate 
experience  as  a  genuine  philosophical  fact  in  the  latter  work,  whereas 
in  Time  and  Free-Will  space  is  supposed  to  be  present  in  the  imme- 
diate illegitimately.  M.  Bergson's  recognition  that  the  immediate  is 
really  extended  was  encouraged,  perhaps,  by  an  advance  in  psycho- 
logical doctrine  in  various  quarters,  but  the  development  of  the 
doctrine  itself  of  Time  and  Free-Will  from  the  premise  that  the  imme- 
diate data  of  consciousness  are  unextended,  to  the  demonstration  that 
practise  and  language  and  abstract  thought  involve  the  confusion  of 
quantity  and  quality  in  the  sense  of  an  actual  mingling  or  pouring 
together  of  matter  and  mind,  brought  M.  Bergson  close  to  the  complete 
admission  that  the  immediate  is  extended.  Postulating  the  extension 
of  immediate  experience,  but  retaining  the  dualistic  hypothesis  and 
the  theory  that  genuine  knowledge  must  coincide  with  the  object  of 
knowledge,  M.  Bergson  proceeds  to  develop  a  doctrine  epistemo- 
logically  similar  to  the  doctrine  of  Time  and  Free-Will.  The  principal 
peculiarity  of  that  book  lay  in  its  attempt  to  combine  the  fact  that  a 
discrepancy  .separates  the  terms  of  the  science  of  psychology  from  psy- 
chology's subject-matter,  with  the  theory  that  knowledge  is  true  of  its 
object  in  the  measure  of  their  resemblance.  Now  in  granting  the  exten- 
sion of  immediate  experience  M.  Bergson  accepts  the  presence  of 
matter  in  immediate  consciousness  and  confronts  a  discrepancy  sepa- 
rating the  terms  of  conceptual  physics  from  the  immediate  material 
of  physical  science,  parallel  to  the  discrepancy  between  the  terms  and 
subject-matter  of  psychological  science.  Hence,  in  Matter  and  Memory 
M.  Bergson  attempts  a  reform  of  the  science  of  matter  similar  to  the 
reform  he  attempted  in  Time  and  free-Will  of  the  science  of  mind. 

Due  to  his  epistemological  presupposition  M.  Bergson  tended  to 
identify  knowledge  of  mind  with  the  subject-matter  of  psychological 
science,  but  the  tendency  was  checked  by  the  danger  of  excluding  the 
possibility  of  error  from  psychology.  Hence  the  "genuine"  mind  of 
Time  and  Free-Will  was  sometimes  concrete  experience  and  sometimes 
an  abstraction  therefrom,  according  to  the  circumstances  of  M. 
Bergson's  treatment.  Similarly  in  Matter  and  Memory  M.  Bergson 

34 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  35 

attempts  to  identify  "genuine"  matter  with  immediate  experience, 
and  then,  reversing  this  tendency,  grants  that  matter  is  an  abstraction 
really,  just  as  the  physical  scientists  claim  that  it  is.  But  in  addition 
to  an  indeterminate  doctrine  of  physics  in  which  real  matter  is  defined 
alternately  as  the  abstraction  that  physics  describes  and  as  a  concrete 
immediate  experience,  Matter  and  Memory  once  more  presents  an 
indeterminate  psychology  in  which  genuine  mind  approaches  and 
recedes  from  immediate  experience.  Hence  two  general  statements 
in  Matter  and  Memory  concerning  experience:  Allowing  both  matter 
and  mind  to  coincide  with  the  immediate  data  of  consciousness,  and 
consequently  with  one  another,  M.  Bergson  treats  all  reality  as  of  a 
piece,  thereby  satisfying  his  premise  that  veritable  knowledge  is  one 
with  its  object.  But  the  necessity  of  providing  a  position  for  error 
bars  him  from  the  hypothesis  that  reality  is  all  of  a  piece,  and  causes 
M.  Bergson  to  distinguish  matter  and  mind  from  one  another  by  dis- 
tinguishing both  from  immediate  experience. 

The  former  descriptive  treatment  of  the  make-up  or  character  of 
reality  is  exemplified  in  Matter  and  Memory  in  numerous  passages. 
Thus  in  setting  forth  the  results  to  which  the  application  of  his  method 
of  trusting  (p.  245)  to  "immediate  knowledge"  may  lead,  M.  Bergson 
formulates  a  number  of  propositions  (pp.  246-291)  which  are  intended, 
according  to  himself  (p.  267),  to  narrow  the  interval  between  hetero- 
geneous qualities  and  homogeneous  movements,  or  sensations  and 
matter.  And  in  this  phase  of  his  thought  he  describes  matter  and  mind 
as  different  rhythms  of  duration,  or  different  degrees  of  tension  of 
consciousness  in  a  scale  of  being  (p.  275).  For  the  most  part  M.  Berg- 
son, however,  breaks  reality  into  separate  terms:  mind,  matter,  and 
immediate  experience.  In  outline  the  indetermination  of  the  nature 
he  ascribes  to  matter  and  mind  develops  the  following  variations. 

When,  in  order  to  satisfy  his  epistemological  premise,  M.  Bergson 
begins  to  reduce  the  interval  between  immediate  experience  and  matter 
by  treating  the  abstractness  of  conceptual  matter  as  false,  the  "pure 
perception"  in  which  M.  Bergson  supposes  mind  and  matter  partly  to 
coincide,  tends  to  take  on  the  character  of  conceptual  matter.  As  the 
interval  disappears  and  matter  becomes  immediate  experience,  quality 
is  treated  as  actually  present  in  matter;  matter  acquires  the  charac- 
teristics which  physical  science  disregards  in  immediate  experience; 
matter  is  no  longer  a  determined  system  of  movements,  but  exercises 
the  faculty  of  choice;  and  "pure  perception"  is  concrete  immediate 
experience.  And  so,  as  matter  moves  towards  immediate  experience, 
"  pure  perception"  is  identified  with  ordinary  perception;  that  is,  mem- 
ory is  treated  as  the  mark  of  whatever  is  mental,  and  as  constituting 


36  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

perception,  and  even  matter,  perhaps.  But,  contrarily,  when  matter 
regresses  from  immediate  experience  in  the  direction  of  conceptual 
space,  memory  is  treated  as  falsifying  perception.  Now,  when  matter 
coincides  with  the  immediate  data  of  consciousness,  ceasing  to  be  a 
determined  system  of  movements,  the  nerves  choose  and  deliberate 
and  do  the  work  of  the  mind;  and  mind,  or  the  past,  influences  matter 
directly  by  affecting  the  brain.  Naturally,  when  matter  falls  in  with 
immediate  experience,  the  abstract  space  of  mathematical  physics  is 
described  as  an  instrument  of  falsification  vitiating  concrete  extensity. 
But  when  the  identification  of  mind  with  the  immediate  forces 
matter  towards  conceptual  matter,  space  is  treated  as  valid  phi- 
losophically. 

In  his  Introduction  to  Matter  and  Memory  M.  Bergson  states 
his  project  of  reforming  philosophy  by  identifying  matter  with  imme- 
diate experience.  The  difficulties  of  dualism  are  due  for  the  most 
part,  he  declares  (p.  vii),  to  the  conceptions  which  philosophers  enter- 
tain of  matter;  Descartes,  he  continues  (p.  ix),  put  matter  too  far  from 
us  when  he  made  it  one  with  geometrical  space,  and  Berkeley  exceeded 
the  truth  in  an  opposite  direction  when  he  made  matter  coincide  with 
mind.  "We  place  ourselves,"  says  M.  Bergson,  "at  the  point  of  view 
of  a  mind  unaware  of  the  disputes  between  philosophers.  Such  a  mind 
would  naturally  believe  that  matter  exists  just  as  it  is  perceived.  .  .  . 
In  a  word,  we  consider  matter  before  the  dissociation  which  idealism 
and  realism  have  brought  about  between  its  existence  and  its  appear- 
ance (p.  viii)."  The  difficulty,  as  we  have  said,  connected  with  the 
enterprise  of  identifying  matter  and  immediate  experience,  appears  in 
a  loss  of  the  distinction  between  the  object  of  physical  science  and 
that  science  itself,  involving  the  preclusion  of  error  in  physics.  In 
accordance  with  our  preliminary  outline  above  let  us  record  some  of 
the  ambiguities  springing  from  the  difficulty  of  identifying  matter 
with  immediate  experience. 

We  start  from  perception  and  note  that  as  matter  recedes  from  the 
immediate,  perception  is  dragged  in  the  direction  of  space.  Sometimes 
in  M.  Bergson's  exposition  matter  is  qualitative;  that  is,  it  partakes 
of  the  nature  of  immediate  experience :"  .  .  .  the  sensible  qualities 
of  matter  would  be  known  in  themselves  .  .  .  could  we  but  dis- 
engage them  from  that  particular  rhythm  of  duration  which  character- 
izes our  consciousness"  (p.  75).  "  .  .  .  we  must  leave  to  matter 
those  qualities  which  materialists  and  spiritualists  alike  strip  from 
it"  (p.  1 80).  "...  there  is  no  impassible  barrier,  no  essential 
difference,  no  real  distinction  even  .  .  .  between  quality  and  move- 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY  37 

ment"  (p.  291).  1  At  other  points  in  his  exposition  M.  Bergson  seems 
to  argue  that  matter  is  not  legitimately  possessed  of  its  perceived  qual- 
ities: "The  qualitative  heterogeneity  of  our  .  .  .  perceptions  of 
the  universe  results  from  the  fact  that  .  .  .  memory  condenses  in 
each  an  enormous  multiplicity  of  vibrations.  .  .  .  If  we  were  to 
eliminate  all  memory,  we  should  pass  .  .  .  from  perception  to 
matter  .  .  .  Then  matter  .  .  .  would  tend  more  and  more 
towards  that  system  of  homogeneous  vibrations  of  which  realism  tells 
us  .  .  ."  (p.  76).  Concomitantly  perception  recedes  from  mind: 
"  Pure  perception  .  .  .  however  rapid  we  suppose  it  to  be,  occupies 
a  certain  depth  of  duration,  so  that  our  successive  perceptions  are 
never  the  real  moments  of  things  .  .  .  "  (p.  75)  "  .  .  .  spirit" 
is  "in  perception  already  memory  ...'"...  the  humblest 
function  of  spirit  is  to  bind  together  the  successive  moments  of  the 
duration  of  things  .  .  ."  (p.  295).  Yet:  "  .  .  .  pure  perception 
is  .  .  .  in  a  sense  matter  .  .  ."  (p.  325).  Further:  "  .  .  . 
matter  .  .  .  coincides,  in  essentials,  with  pure  perception  .  .  . " 
"It  is  in  very  truth  within  matter  that  pure  perception  places  us 
.  .  ."  (p.  235),  "These  .  .  .  terms,  perception  and  matter, 
approach  each  other  in  the  measure  that  we  divest  ourselves  of  ... 
the  prejudices  of  action  .  .  ."  (p.  293). 2 

Does  memory  then  falsify  or  does  it  constitute  perception?  As 
matter  progresses  in  the  direction  of  the  immediate,  forcing  percep- 
tion towards  mind,  memory  seems  to  be  essential  to  perception, 
perhaps  even  to  matter  itself:  "Does  not  .  .  .  an  irreducible  opposi- 
tion remain  between  matter  .  .  .  and  the  lowest  degree  of  ... 
memory?  .  .  .  the  distinction  subsists,  but  union  becomes  pos- 
sible, since  it  would  be  given,  under  the  radical  form  of  a  partial 
coincidence,  in  pure  perception.  .  .  .  We  may  go  further:  memory 
does  not  intervene  as  a  function  of  which  matter  has  no  presenti- 
ment and  which  it  does  not  imitate  in  its  own  way"  (p.  297).  But: 
1  .  .  .  what  can  be  a  non-perceived  material  object  .  .  .  unless 
it  is  a  kind  of  unconscious  mental  state"  (p.  183)?  '  .  .  .  matter 
as  grasped  in  concrete  perception  .  .  .  is  in  great  part  the  work 
of  memory"  (p.  237).  "Theoretically  .  .  .  the  part  played  by 
consciousness  in  external  perception  .  .  .  [is]  to  join  together,  by 
the  continuous  thread  of  memory,  instantaneous  visions  of  the  real. 
But,  in  fact,  there  is  for  us  nothing  that  is  instantaneous.  In  all 
that  goes  by  that  name  there  is  already  some  work  of  memory" 
(p-  75)-  "Your  perception,  however  instantaneous,  consists  .  .  . 

i  Cf.  pp.  75,  183,  237,  238.  244,  268,  271,  276,293. 
1  Cf.  pp.  78,  183,  306. 


38  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

in  an  incalculable  multitude  of  remembered  elements;  and  in  truth 
every  perception  is  already  memory"  (p.  194).  "  .  .  .to  perceive 
consists  in  condensing  enormous  periods  of  an  infinitely  diluted  exis- 
tence" (p.  275).  Slightly  different  is  the  following  view  of  the  subject: 
"...  the  subjective  side  of  perception  .  .  .  [is]  the  contraction 
effected  by  memory,  and  the  objective  reality  of  matter  .  .  .  [is] 
the  multitudinous  and  successive  vibrations  into  which  this  percep- 
tion can  be  internally  broken  up''  (p.  77).  As  matter  approaches 
homogeneous  space,  memory  is  treated  more  and  more  like  a  foreign 
element  in  perception.  M.  Bergson  argues  (pp.  24,  25)  that  perception 
must  not  be  supposed  to  differ  from  memory  in  degree  of  intensity 
only;  that  in  order  to  make  our  idea  of  matter  clear  we  must  neglect 
the  contraction  operated  by  memory;  and  that  perception  as  confined 
to  the  present,  over  against  perception  impregnated  with  the  past, 
would  mould  itself  truthfully  on  its  object.  "Our  perception  of 
matter  is  ...  [not]  relative  or  subjective,  at  least  in  principle,  and 
apart  from  memory"  (p.  48).  "The  capital  error,  the  error  which, 
passing  over  from  psychology  into  metaphysic,  shuts  us  out  . 
from  the  knowledge  ...  of  body  and  of  spirit,  is  that  which  sees 
only  a  difference  of  intensity,  instead  of  a  difference  of  nature,  between 
pure  perception  and  memory"  (p.  71).  '  .  .  .  memory  above  all 
.  .  .  lends  to  perception  its  subjective  character;  the  philosophy  of 
matter  must  aim  in  the  first  instance  ...  at  eliminating  the  con- 
tributions of  memory"  (p.  80).  "Either.  .  .  our  conception  of  mat- 
ter is  false,  or  memory  is  radically  distinct  from  perception"  (p.  318). 3 
Similarly,  as  matter  progresses  in  the  direction  of  the  immediate 
it  ceases  to  be  the  system  of  determined  interactions  defined  by  physics, 
and  takes  on  indetermination  in  the  form  of  a  faculty  of  choice. 
"  .  .  .  matter,  the  further  we  push  its  analysis  .  .  .  [tends]  more 
and  more  to  be  only  a  succession  of  ...  movements  which  may 
be  deduced  each  from  the  other  .  .  ."  (p.  295).  "To  reply  to  an 
action  received  by  an  immediate  reaction  .  .  .  this  is  the  funda- 
mental law  of  matter:  herein  consists  necessity"  (p.  279).  '  .  .  . 
we  may  say  that  the  nervous  system,  a  material  mass  presenting  .  .  . 
physical  properties  only  .  .  .  can  have  no  other  office  than  to 
receive,  inhibit,  or  transmit  movement"  (p.  78).  "  .  .  .  the  living 
body  in  general,  and  the  nervous  system  in  particular,  are  the  only 
channels  for  the  transmission  of  movements  .  .  ."  (p.  81).  "  .  .  . 
as  soon  as  we  compare  the  structure  of  the  spinal  cord  with  that  of  the 
brain,  we  are  bound  to  infer  that  there  is  merely  a  difference  of  compli- 
cation, and  not  a  difference  in  kind,  between  the  functions  of  the 

*  Cf.  pp.  45,  64,  72,  75,  78,  84,  315. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  39 

brain  and  the  .  .  .  activity  of  the  medullary  system"  (p.  1 8). 
Nevertheless:  "  .  .  .  there  is  .  .  .a  radical  distinction  between 
the  pure  automatism,  of  which  the  seat  is  mainly  in  the  spinal  cord, 
and  the  voluntary  activity  which  requires  the  intervention  of  the 
brain"  (p.  18).  "  .  .  .  the  cells  of  the  various  regions  of  the 
cortex  .  .  .  allow  the  stimulation  received  to  reach  at  will  this  or 
that  motor  mechanism  of  the  spinal  cord,  and  so  to  choose  its  effect" 
(p.  19).  "  .  .  .  if  there  exist  in  the  material  world  places  where 
the  vibrations  received  are  not  mechanically  transmitted  .  .  . 
[these]  zones  of  indetermination  .  .  .  must  occur  along  the  path 
of  what  is  termed  the  sensori-motor  process"  (p.  37).  "The  afferent 
nerves  bring  to  the  brain  a  disturbance,  which,  after  having  intelli- 
gently chosen  its  path,  transmits  itself  to  motor  mechanisms  created 
by  repetition"  (p.  96). 4 

In  the  measure  that  matter  moves  from  pure  space  towards  imme- 
diate experience,  acquiring  the  character  of  concrete  perception,  which 
is  constituted  by  memory,  the  past,  from  being  invalid  takes  on  a 
clearly  admitted  potency:  "  .  .  .  though  the  whole  series  of  our 
past  images  remains  present  with  us,  still  the  representation  which  is 
analogous  to  the  present  perception  has  to  be  chosen'1  (p.  114).  "In 
the  degree  that  .  .  .  recollections  take  the  form  of  a  more  complete, 
more  concrete,  and  more  conscious  representation,  do  they  tend  to 
confound  themselves  with  the  perception  which  attracts  them  .  .  ." 
(p.  160).  "Virtual,  this  memory  can  only  become  actual  by  means 
of  the  perception  which  attracts  it.  Powerless,  it  borrows  life  and 
strength  from  the  present  sensation  in  which  it  is  materialized"  (p. 
163).  "...  the  past  tends  to  reconquer,  by  actualizing  itself, 
the  influence  it  had  lost"  (p.  169).  "  It  is  just  because  I  made  .  .  . 
[pure  memory]  active  that  it  has  become  actual,  that  is  to  say,  a 
sensation  capable  of  provoking  movements"  (p.  179).  "Memory 
.  .  .  [is]  powerless  as  long  as  it  remains  without  utility  .  .  ." 
(p.  181).  Injure  the  cerebral  mechanism  and  "  .  .  .  you  deprive 
.  .  .  [the  past  image]  of  all  means  of  acting  upon  the  real  and 
consequently  ...  of  being  realized"  (p.  88).  '  .  .  .  our  mem- 
ory directs  upon  the  perception  .  .  .  the  memory-images  which 
resemble  it  .  .  .  Memory  thus  creates  anew  the  present  perception" 
(p.  123).  "We  will  try  to  follow  pure  memory  ...  in  the  con- 
tinuous effort  which  it  makes  to  insert  itself  into  motor  habit"  (p.  202). 
1  .  .  .  it  is  necessary  that  .  .  .  recollections  .  .  .  should  be 
able  to  set  going  in  the  brain  the  same  machinery  that  perception 
ordinarily  sets  to  work"  (p.  316).  5 

*Cf.  pp.  2,  s,  10,  20,  21,  30,  32,  35.  40,  46,  68,  80.  86.  178,  299,  3OQ,  331- 
5C/.  pp.  87,  97,  98,  103,  119,  131.  168,  176,  180,  185,  197,  299,  319,  320. 


40  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

In  so  far  as  the  past  is  viewed  by  M.  Bergson  as  endowed  with 
potency  the  distinction  of  function  between  the  spinal  cord  and  the 
brain  becomes  more  marked;  since  it  is  upon  the  brain  that  he  con- 
siders the  past  to  act:  "There  is  ...  only  a  difference  of  degree 
— there  can  be  no  difference  in  kind — between  what  is  called  the  per- 
ceptive faculty  of  the  brain  and  the  reflex  functions  of  the  spinal  cord" 
(p.  10).  "In  our  opinion  (p.  19)  .  .  .  the  brain  is  no  more  than  a 
kind  of  central  telephonic  exchange  .  .  .  its  office  is  limited  to  the 
transmission  and  division  of  movement"  (p.  20).  "The  truth  is  that 
my  nervous  system  interposed  between  the  objects  which  affect  my 
body  and  those  which  I  can  influence,  is  a  mere  conductor,  transmitting, 
sending  back,  or  inhibiting  movement.  This  conductor  is  composed 
of  an  enormous  number  of  threads  which  stretch  from  the  periphery 
to  the  center,  and  from  the  center  to  the  periphery"  (p.  40).  On  the 
other  hand:  "Our  contention  ...  is  that  .  .  .  there  are  .  .  . 
in  ...  [the  substance  of  the  brain],  organs  of  virtual  perception, 
influenced  by  the  intention  of  memory,  as  there  are  at  the  periphery 
organs  of  real  perception,  influenced  by  the  action  of  the  object"  (p. 
164,  note).  The  "  .  .  .  organ  of  sense  ...  is  like  an  immense 
keyboard,  on  which  the  external  object  executes  at  once  its  harmony 
of  a  thousand  notes.  .  .  .  Now,  suppress  the  external  object  or  the 
organ  of  sense,  or  both :  the  same  elementary  sensations  may  be  excited, 
for  the  same  strings  are  there,  ready  to  vibrate  in  the  same  way ;  but 
where  is  the  keyboard  which  permits  thousands  of  them  to  be  struck 
at  once?  ...  In  our  opinion  the  'region  of  images,'  if  it  exists, 
can  only  be  a  keyboard  of  this  nature.  Certainly  it  is  in  no  way 
inconceivable  that  a  purely  psychic  cause  should  directly  set  in  action 
all  the  strings  concerned"  (p.  165).  "  .  .  .in  the  case  of  mental 
hearing  .  .  .  [there  is]  only  one  plausible  hypothesis  .  .  .  namely 
that  .  .  .  [the  temporal  lobe]  occupies  with  regard  to  the  center  of 
hearing  itself  the  place  that  is  exactly  symmetrical  with  the  organ  of 
sense.  It  is,  in  this  case,  a  mental  ear."6 

As  matter  moves  from  space  to  immediate  experience,  the  concept  of 
homogeneous  space,  by  means  of  which  physics  abstracts  matter 
from  the  immediate,  is  treated  as  an  illegitimate  substitute  for  concrete 
extensity.  When  M.  Bergson  regards  the  science  of  physics  as  specu- 
latively  true,  saying  for  example  that "  .  .  .  the  object  of  science  is 
.  .  .  to  rediscover  the  natural  articulations  of  a  universe  we  have 
carved  artificially"  (p.  260),  and  that  Faraday  and  Kelvin  (p.  265)  are 
the  two  physicists  of  the  nineteenth  century  who  have  penetrated  far- 
thest into  the  constitution  of  matter,  he  certainly  accepts  as  specu- 

8  Cf.,  pp.  86,  167,  168,  299. 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY  4! 

latively  valid  the  concept  of  geometrical  space.  And  when  M.  Bergson 
criticizes  the  notion  of  homogeneous  time  (p.  273),  he  seems  to  regard 
space  as  a  legitimate  philosophical  concept.  But  later  on  (p.  276), 
space  is  mentioned  as  merely  "underlying"  phenomena,  and  as  not 
being  (p.  280)  a  "property  of  things,"  but  a  "wholly  ideal  diagram 
(p.  278)  of  arbitrary  and  infinite  divisibility,"  which,  for  the  sake  of 
action,  "we  throw  .  .  .  beneath  concrete  extensity"  in  order  to 
"  persuade  ourselves  that  the  real  is  divisible  at  will."  Space,  he  writes, 
is  "the  diagrammatic  design  of  our  eventual  action  upon  matter"  (p. 
280) ;  and  is  neither  (p.  281)  a  reality  contemplated  nor  a  form  of  con- 
templation, from  the  speculative  point  of  view.  "The  artifice  of  the 
philosophical  method  proposed,"  says  M.  Bergson  (p.  243),  "consists 
.  in  distinguishing  the  point  of  view  of  customary  or  useful 
knowledge  from  that  of  true  knowledge."  The  question  whether  such 
a  method  is  applicable  to  the  problem  of  matter  (p.  244),  is  the  question 
whether  "in  this  'diversity  of  phenomena'  of  which  Kant  spoke,  that 
part  which  shows  a  vague  tendency  towards  extension  could  be 
seized  by  us  on  the  hither  side  of  the  homogeneous  space  to  which  it  is 
applied  and  through  which  we  subdivide  it  .  .  ."  "  Certainly  it  would 
be  a  chimerical  enterprise  to  try  to  free  ourselves  from  the  fundamental 
conditions  of  external  perception.  But  the  question  is  whether  certain 
conditions,  which  we  usually  regard  as  fundamental,  do  not  rather 
concern  the  use  to  be  made  of  things  .  .  .far  more  than  the  pure 
knowledge  which  we  can  have  of  them.  ...  In  regard  to  con- 
crete extension  .  .  .we  do  not  see  why  it  should  be  bound  up  with 
the  amorphous  and  inert  space  which  subtends  it.  .  .  .  It  might, 
then,  be  possible,  in  a  certain  measure,  to  transcend  space  without 
stepping  out  of  extensity,  and  here  we  should  really  have  a  return  to 
the  immediate,  since  we  do  indeed  perceive  extensity,  whereas  space  is 
merely  conceived — being  a  kind  of  mental  diagram"  (p.  45). 

Just  as  in  Time  and  Free-Will  the  material  of  M.  Bergson's  argument 
wavered  back  and  forth  between  space  and  pure  uniqueness,  so  here 
his  material  moves  between  space  and  "pure  perception,"  and  between 
"pure  perception"  and  "pure  memory."  He  has  spaced  out  his  original 
scheme  of  two  points :  quality  and  quantity,  with  a  third  term  in  which 
they  legitimately  meet.  And  the  difficulty  experienced  by  M.  Bergson 
in  satisfying  the  implication  of  the  resemblance-theory  of  knowl- 
edge: that  each  object  is  the  only  genuine  knowledge  of  itself,  which 
made  it  difficult  for  him  to  secure  the  separateness  of  qualitative  mind 
from  quantitative  matter,  recurs  now  in  the  difficulty  of  preventing 
matter  from  coinciding  with  pure  perception.  Symmetrically,  to 


42  LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY 

provide  for  error  (and  to  provide  for  the  possibility  of  abstraction, 
and  for  the  undeniable  validity  of  physical  science),  it  is  impossible 
for  M.  Bergson  fully  to  identify  matter  with  pure  experience;  it  is 
impossible  for  him  to  be  faithful  entirely  to  his  intention  of  considering 
matter  ^'before  the  dissociation  which  idealism  and  realism  have 
brought  about  between  its  existence  and  its  appearance,"  just  as  it 
was  impossible  for  him  to  admit  the  confusion  of  matter  with  mind,  in 
Time  and  Free- Will,  as  a  legitimate  fact.  In  order  better  to  envisage 
the  relation  between  the  distribution  of  M.  Bergson's  epistemological 
elements  in  Time  and  Free-Will,  and  their  distribution  in  Matter  and 
Memory,  we  must  compare  his  opinions  as  to  the  sources  of  the  corrup- 
tion of  immediate  experience  as  they  are  set  forth  in  the  one  book  and 
in  the  other. 

In  Time  and  Free-Will  M.  Bergson  concluded, — after  discovering 
an  element  of  experience  different  from  the  matter  of  physics  and 
from  what  the  mind  of  associationistic  psychology  has  in  common 
with  the  matter  of  physics, — that  real  mind  or  the  real  immediate  is  the 
opposite  of  the  abstract  matter  of  physical  science.  He  concluded 
that  what  was  originally  real  mind  has  become  falsified  by  being  mate- 
rialized through  the  influence  of  language,  stupidity,  social  life,  or  what 
not.  In  Matter  and  Memory,  having  admitted  to  his  philosophy  a  new 
term  in  which  matter  and  mind  are  supposed  coincident,  he  is  able  no 
longer  unequivocally  to  claim  that  matter  falsifies  the  immediate, 
since  he  has  brought  matter  into  the  immediate,  and  the  immediate 
could  not  readily  be  imagined  to  falsify  itself.  He  is  therefore  forced, 
in  so  far  as  he  makes  pure  perception  a  fraction  of  the  material  world, 
to  suppose  matter  falsified  by  mind ;  for  he  must  suppose  the  immediate 
falsified  because  he  finds  in  it  an  element — uniqueness — not  repre- 
sented in  physics,  where  it  should  be  represented,  in  his  view,  in  order 
to  satisfy  the  implication  of  the  resemblance-theory  that  an  idea  must 
be  one  with  its  object  to  be  genuinely  true.  But,  when  he  regards 
the  immediate  as  especially  mental  he  is  forced  to  find  in  matter 
an  influence  reaching  out  to  falsify  mind.  In  order  that  matter  may 
falsify  the  immediate  it  must  be  distinct  therefrom,  and  thus  must 
take  on  the  abstract  character  ascribed  to  it  ordinarily  by  physics.  By 
legitimatizing  the  extension  of  the  immediate,  in  other  words,  M. 
Bergson  breaks  down  the  principal  distinction  between  mind  and 
matter,  and  over  against  the  concrete  unique  phases  of  immediate 
experience  he  can  set  not  only  abstract  matter,  but  abstract  mind  as 
well,  attributing  the  abstractness  of  the  sciences  of  the  immediate  to 
the  illegitimate  influence  of  first  one  side  of  the  dualistic  world  and 
then  of  the  other. 


LOGIC  OF  BERG  SONS  PHILOSOPHY       43 

Real  matter,  therefore,  will  be  defined  by  the  absence  of  certain 
attributes  treated  as  veritably  present  in  mind  and  thence  illegiti- 
mately transferred  to  the  material  world.  Real  mind  will  be  defined 
by  the  absence  of  these  same  attributes  now  supposed  veritably  proper 
to  the  nature  of  matter  and  introduced  illegitimately  to  the  realm  of 
consciousness.  The  reconciliation  of  these  contradictory  views  will  be 
achieved  by  giving  up  the  dualistic  distinction  and  treating  all  reality 
as  concrete  and  unique  in  a  variety  of  ways,  and  as  lacking  in  all  of 
these  forms  the  characteristics  that  distinguish  the  terms  of  abstract 
science  from  immediate  experience. 

What,  then,  are  the  causes,  according  to  M.  Bergson,  that  have  led 
philosophy  to  mistake  the  real  nature  of  matter?  Sometimes  the  cor- 
ruption of  matter  and  of  experience  in  general  is  ascribed  to  causes 
determined  vaguely,  as  for  instance:  to  "the  need  of  symmetry"  (p. 
250),  "the  exigencies  of  social  life"  (p. 239),  an  "invincible  tendency" 
(p.  154),  "instinct"  (p.  186),  "reflexion"  (p.  216),  a  "metaphysical 
error"  (p.  45),  "life"  (p.  194),  "language"  (p.  159),  "  scientific  thought" 
(p.  154),  and  so  forth.  But  on  the  whole  M.  Bergson  ascribes  the 
falsity  of  our  idea  of  matter  to  an  influence  of  mind:  for  example,  to 
"intellect"  (p.  190),  "memory"  (p.  76),  "perception"  (p.  178),  "will" 
(p.  278).  On  the  other  hand  he  ordinarily  traces  the  falsification  of 
our  psychology  to  some  material  influence;  to  "body"  (p.  233),  "mate- 
rial needs  of  life"  (p.  185),  "needs  of  the  body"  (p.  47),  "images  drawn 
from  space"  (p.  191),  "space"  (p.  293),  and  so  forth.  Since  M.  Bergson 
defines  the  body,  on  the  whole,  as  a  center  of  action,  and  mind  as  a 
practical  instrument,  it  is  from  action  that  he  derives  the  positive 
characteristics  by  the  absence  of  which  he  defines  real  mind  and  real 
matter;  and  which,  illegitimately  present  in  mind  and  in  matter,  he 
traces  back  in  the  one  case  to  matter  and  in  the  other  to  mind.  Let 
us  observe  the  ambiguous  position  and  definition  of  action  in  M. 
Bergson's  dualism,  and  its  changeable  status  in  the  scheme  of  his 
philosophical  values. 

Sometimes  M.  Bergson  finds  the  source  of  the  imperfection  of  our 
knowledge  of  all  things  in  an  indefinite  practise  to  which  the  real  is 
adapted  (p.  239) ;  the  internal  and  external  continuities  of  pure  intui- 
tion being  thus  displaced  by  distinct  words  and  independent  objects, 
respectively.  Just  because  the  adaptation  is  in  the  interest  of  practise, 
it  is  argued  (p.  240),  this  adaptation  does  not  follow  the  internal  lines 
of  the  structure  of  things.  Philosophy  should  consequently  seek  expe- 
rience "above  that  decisive  turn  where  .  .  .  [it  takes]  a  bias  in  the 
direction  of  utility"  (p.  241);  our  ordinary  and  scientific  knowledge,  at 
this  point,  is  not  relative  to  the  fundamental  structure  of  our  minds, 


44  LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY 

according  to  M.  Bergson,  nor  to  the  real  nature  of  matter,  but  only  to 
matter  "disorganized,  and  to  the  superficial  and  acquired  habits"  of 
our  mind.  On  the  contrary,  when  M.  Bergson  is  engaged  with  the  con- 
struction of  his  psychology  he  treats  action  as  "the  fundamental  law 
of  our  psychical  life"  (p.  234) ;  as  "the  fundamental  law  of  life"  (p.  194) ; 
and  as  "  a  faculty  .  .  .  towards  which  all  the  powers  of  the  organized 
body  are  seen  to  converge"  (p.  67).  Science,  at  this  point,  is  regarded 
as  essentially  true,  because,  although  it  is  symbolic,  "philosophy  is 
bound  to  ask  why  .  .  .  [the  symbols  of  science]  are  more  convenient 
than  others,  and  why  they  permit  of  further  advance"  (p.  266). 

Since  physics  and  psychology  formulate  their  subject-matters  in 
abstract  and,  therefore,  distinct  terms,  the  fundamental  discrepancy 
between  science  and  the  field  of  immediate  experience  is  that  the  latter 
presents  continuities,  the  former  discontinuities.  Whenever  M.  Berg- 
son is  not  in  the  constructive  phase  of  his  psychological  work,  conse- 
quently; whenever,  that  is,  he  insists  on  the  distinction  between  ordi- 
nary knowledge  and  philosophical  or  pure  knowledge,  he  treats  action 
as  a  discontinuous  function.  When  discontinuous  action  is  lodged  in 
the  mind  it  is  continuous  matter  that  gets  falsified  by  its  influence; 
but  when  action  is  material,  mind  receives  the  spurious  discontinuity 
from  the  material  division  of  the  world.  Thus:  "Homogeneous  space 
and  homogeneous  time  .  .  .  express  .  .  .  the  .  .  .  work  .  .  . 
of  division  which  we  effect  on  the  moving  continuity  of  the  real  in 
order  to  obtain  there  a  fulcrum  for  our  action  .  .  ."  (p.  280). 
1  .  the  divisibility  of  matter  is  entirely  relative  to  our  action 

thereon  .  .  ."  (p.  292).  Homogeneous  space  ".  .  .  interests 
the  behavior  of  a  being  which  acts  upon  matter,  but  not  the  work  of  a 
mind  which  speculates  on  its  essence"  (p.  293).  The  atom  "  .  .  . 
is  hardly  anything  but  an  outward  projection  of  human  needs  .  .  ." 
(p.  269).  Contrarily:  "The  impotence  of  speculative  reason  .  .  . 
is  perhaps  at  bottom  only  the  impotence  of  an  intellect  enslaved  to 
certain  necessities  of  bodily  life  .  .  ."  (p.  241).  "  .  .  .we  are 
.  .  .  accustomed  to  reverse,  for  the  sake  of  action,  the  real  order 
of  things,  we  are  so  strongly  obsessed  by  images  drawn  from  space 
.  .  ."  (p.  191).  '  .  .  .  we  extend  to  the  series  of  memories, 
in  time,  that  .  .  .  which  applies  only  to  the  collection  of  bodies 
instantaneously  perceived  in  space.  The  fundamental  illusion  con- 
sists in  transferring  to  duration  itself,  in  its  continuous  flow,  the 
form  of  the  instantaneous  sections  which  we  make  in  it"  (p.  193). 
(The  material  world  has  been  defined  as  such  a  section,  p.  178.)  "It 
is  certain  that  mind,  first  of  all,  stands  over  against  matter  as  a  pure 
unity  in  face  of  an  essentially  divisible  multiplicity  .  .  ."  (p.  235). 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  45 

Seeing  that  memory  and  perception  are  not  stably  localized  in 
M.  Bergson's  scheme,  as  has  been  shown  above,  we  find  that  these 
elements  of  his  argument  take  on  successively  the  properties  of  genuine 
reality  and  of  vitiated  or  vitiating  reality.  M.  Bergson  has  it,  for 
example,  that  perception  (p.  237)  is  part  of  the  material  world;  that 
matter  is,  therefore,  of  the  nature  of  perception,  which  in  turn  is 
mental,  since  perception  is  largely  the  creation  of  memory.  From  this 
he  concludes  that,  philosophically,  mind  and  matter  are  essentially 
the  same,  since  the  discontinuity  of  perceived  qualities  must  be 
reflected  in  real  matter  (p.  238),  which,  were  it  pure  quantity  or  homo- 
geneity, would  be  nothing  at  all.  Here  the  condensation  effected  by 
memory  is  constitutive  of  genuine  reality.  In  fact:  "  .  .  .  the 
external  object  yields  to  us  deeper  and  deeper  parts  of  itself,  as 
our  memory  adopts  a  correspondingly  higher  degree  of  tension  .  .  ." 
(p.  145).  The  greater  or  less  degree  of  this  tension  expresses  the 
greater  or  less  intensity  of  life  (p.  279).  Nevertheless,  being  active  for 
the  sake  of  utility  memory  ' '  supplants ' '  real  intuition  (p.  7 1 ) .  " .  .  . 
the  philosophy  of  matter  must  aim  ...  at  eliminating  the  con- 
tributions of  memory"  (p.  80).  '  .  .  .  our  memory  solidifies 
.  .  .  the  continuous  flow  of  things"  (p.  279).  The  basic  error  of 
philosophy  is  to  regard  memory  as  an  operation  of  pure  knowledge, 
neglecting  its  relation  with  conduct;  memory  is  turned  toward  action 
(p.  302).  But,  to  return  to  the  other  position:  "  .  .  .  memory  is 
.  .  .  essentially  a  knowledge  .  .  .  [addressed  to  a  pure  spirit,  as 
having  a  purely  speculative  interest]"  (p.  125).  Again,  action  abolishes 
memory  since  it  is  useless  (p.  186);  action  causes  memory  to  shrink 
into  the  impersonal  (p.  130);  to  remember  one  must  withdraw  from 
action;  one  "must  have  the  power  to  value  the  useless"  (p.  94).  But: 
Action  employs  memory  (p.  188) ;  action,  to  be  adequate  to  its  circum- 
stances, requires  memory  (p.  198). 

In  the  same  way  perception  plays  various  parts,  sometimes  as  a 
source  of  illegitimate  discontinuity,  sometimes  as  the  bearer  of  that 
continuity  which  marks  out  reality  itself.  To  "obtain  a  vision  of 
matter,"  says  M.  Bergson  (p.  276),  "  .  .  .  pure,  and  freed  from  all 
that  the  exigencies  of  life  compel  you  to  add  to  it  in  external  perception 
.  .  .  try  to  connect  together  the  discontinuous  objects  of  daily 
experience  .  .  ."  (p.  276),  and  consider  the  mobility  of  the  qualities 
of  these  objects:  That  undivided  act  which  our  consciousness  becomes 
aware  of  in  our  own  movements  .  '  "Our  perception  . 

terminates  .  .  .  [the  objects  of  the  material  universe]  at  the  point 
where  our  possible  action  upon  them  ceases.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  pri- 
mary .  .  .  operation  of  the  perceiving  mind :  it  marks  out  divisions 


46  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

in  the  continuity  of  the  extended  .  .  ."  (p.  278).  But  is  not  then 
the  discontinuity  real  at  least  in  action?  No;  for,  "the  duration 
wherein  we  see  ourselves  acting,  and  in  which  it  is  useful  that  we  should 
see  ourselves,  is  a  duration  whose  elements  are  dissociated  and  juxta- 
posed. The  duration  wherein  we  act  is  a  duration  wherein  our  states 
melt  into  each  other.  It  is  within  this  that  we  should  try  to  replace 
ourselves  by  thought,  in  the  exceptional  and  unique  case  when  we 
speculate  on  the  intimate  nature  of  human  action  .  .  ."  (p.  243). 
Moreover,  the  "opposition  between  perception  and  matter  is  the 
artificial  work  of  an  understanding  which  decomposes  and  recomposes 
according  to  its  habits  or  its  laws:  it  is  not  given  in  immediate  intui- 
tion" (p.  326). 

Our  expectation  that  M.  Bergson's  reform  of  dualism  in  Matter 
and  Memory,  based  on  the  attempt  to  identify  matter  with  pure  expe- 
rience, would  issue  in  various  contradictions,  has  been  justified  by  the 
preceding  citations,  which  by  no  means,  however,  exhaust  the  cata- 
logue of  ambiguities  that  might  be  drawn  up  from  M.  Bergson's  book. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  theory  of  knowledge  the  difference 
between  Time  and  Free-Will  and  Matter  and  Memory  is  not  great, 
since  M.  Bergson's  epistemological  assumptions  are  identical  in  the 
two  books.  He  assumes  that  perfect  knowledge  is  wholly  similar  to 
its  object,  and  endeavors  to  combine  this  view  with  the  dualistic 
theory,  which,  as  has  been  noted  already,  separates  knowledge  and 
objebt-of -knowledge  from  one  another.  The  attempt,  in  Time  and 
Free-Will,  resulted  in  a  capital  ambiguity  as  to  whether  mind  and  mat- 
ter, or  quality  and  quantity,  are  together  or  separate;  in  Matter  and 
Memory  it  resulted  in  an  ambiguity  as  to  whether  matter  is  or  is  not 
the  same  as  our  immediate  perception,  and  whether  our  perception  is 
or  is  not  the  same  as  mind.  The  tendency  of  thought  that  brought 
matter  and  mind  together  in  Time  and  Free-Will,  made  matter  and 
perception,  and  perception  and  mind,  coincide  alternately;  in  the  first 
case  the  epistemological  scheme  of  dualism  was  preserved  by  changing 
the  sense  in  which  the  "confusion"  of  quality  and  quantity  had  been 
affirmed ;  from  factual  the  confusion  came  to  be  treated  as  suppositional. 
In  the  second  case  the  dualistic  scheme  was  preserved,  on  the  whole, 
by  changing  the  kind  of  perception  with  which  mind  and  matter  were 
allowed  alternately  to  coincide.  When  matter  had  been  brought  up  to 
perception,  the  perception  with  which  it  coincided  was  different  from 
mind  in  lacking  the  depth  conferred  by  a  condensation  of  memories, 
relatively  or  absolutely;  but  as  matter  receded  from  perception,  per- 
ception was  defined  as  thickened  by  memories  legitimately.  This 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  47 

change  in  the  definition  of  perception  corresponds  to  the  working  out, 
first  in  physics  and  then  in  psychology,  of  the  implication  of  the  resem- 
blance-theory of  knowledge  that  knowledge  shall  coincide  with  its 
object.  There  is  also  a  tendency  in  Matter  and  Memory,  less  elaborate, 
but  more  fundamental,  to  give  up  the  distinction  between  physics  and 
psychology,  shown  in  the  characterizing  of  matter  by  the  traits  of  real 
mind — as  where  matter  is  distinguished  from  extension  by  means  of 
memory  (p.  296) ;  or  where  the  mental  is  spoken  of  as  drawing  nearer 
to  extension  "in  the  measure  in  which  it  evolves  towards  actuality" 
(p.  294).7 

Matter  and  Memory,  we  may  then  say,  is  related  to  the  development 
of  M.  Bergson's  epistemological  science  of  the  immediate  as  follows: 
The  distance  between  Time  and  Free-Will  and  Matter  and  Memory  is 
measured  by  the  admission,  embodied  in  the  latter  work,  that  imme- 
diate experience  is  extended.  This  admission  carries  with  it  the  impli- 
cation that  in  some  sense  matter  is  present  in  immediate  experience. 
But  since  M.  Bergson's  first  step  was  the  condemnation  of  all  psy- 
chology as  not  reflecting  its  subject-matter — the  immediate,  his  second 
step,  following  on  the  admission  that  matter  is  in  the  immediate,  is 
to  condemn,  in  some  sense,  all  physics,  which  distinguishes  matter 
from  immediate  experience  itself.  And  since  M.  Bergson  must  provide, 
or  at  any  rate  promise,  some  substitute  for  the  psychological  and 
physical  sciences  he  condemns,  he  is  led  to  redefine  the  immediate  in 
the  one  case  as  real  mind  and  in  the  other  case  as  real  matter,  in  terms  of 
his  condemnation  of  ordinary  psychology  and  physics.  From  these 
redefinitions  he  derives  one  or  more  sets  of  immediate  data  of  conscious- 
ness, which  he  takes  to  be  the  real  immediate  and  the  real  object  of 
philosophical  knowledge,  or  that  knowledge  itself.  Basing  his  con- 
demnation of  psychology  in  Time  and  Free-Will  on  the  idea  that  if 
mind  and  matter  are  distinct  they  must  be  dissimilar,  he  defines  his 
real  mind  as  not  whatever  matter  may  be,  and  alters  this  negative 
definition,  as  we  have  seen,  into  a  more  or  less  arbitrary  ascription  of 
positive  attributes  to  the  mind.  In  Matter  and  Memory  M.  Bergson 
fastens  on  the  practical  character  of  the  mental  faculties  and,  playing 
these  off  against  his  view  that  knowledge  should  resemble,  and  hence,  in 
the  limit,  coincide  with,  its  object,  he  defines  the  really- known — 
mental  and  material — as  possessed  of  a  nature  opposite  to  the  nature  he 
more  or  less  loosely  connects  with  practise.  Hence  again,  as  in  Time 
and  Free-Will,  M.  Bergson  defines  his  philosophical  or  epistemological 
reality  in  negative  terms,  and  inasmuch  as  both  the  mental  and 
material  aspects  of  reality  are  defined  as  non-practical,  real  mind  and 

7  Cf.  pp.  238,  341,  267,  268,  269,  270,  275,  282,  293- 


48  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

real  matter  are  alike  on  the  terms  of  M.  Bergson's  deduction;  and 
action,  the  source  of  the  double  corruption,  has  no  abiding  place  in 
reality,  but  wanders  from  mind  to  matter  and  back  again. 

Seeing  that  Matter  and  Memory  comprises  for  the  most  part  a  demon- 
stration of  the  practical  nature  of  mind,  there  is  little  elaboration  of 
the  negative  definition  of  real  mind  and  real  matter  as  what  is  un- 
adapted  to  action ;  we  are  told  merely  here  and  there  in  the  course  of 
the  book,  that  if  perception  and  memory  were  not  practical,  if  they 
were  not  analytical  and  discriminative,  that  is,  illuminating  reality 
fitfully,  we  should  have  a  genuine  philosophical  knowledge  of  matter 
and  mind.  The  elaboration  of  these  epistemological  implications 
must  be  studied  in  M.  Bergson's  later  work,  An  Introduction  to  Meta- 
physics, where  the  process  of  reflection  that  led  him  to  include  the 
science  of  physics  under  the  head  of  imperfect  or  non-philosophical 
knowledge,  along  with  psychology,  receives  a  clear  and  comprehensive 
formulation. 


(2)   AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  METAPHYSICS 

In  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  the  epistemological  assumptions 
that  underlie  M.  Bergson's  philosophical  work  first  explicitly  come  to 
the  surface  of  his  thought.  We  have  shown  that  the  doctrine  of  Time 
and  Free-Will  originates  in  the  observation  of  a  discrepancy  between 
the  subject-matter  of  psychology  and  the  terms  of  that  science,  and 
that  the  metaphysics  of  matter  put  forward  in  Matter  and  Memory  is 
based  on  the  fact  that  physics  is  a  science  of  immediate  experience :  on 
the  discrepancy,  that  is,  between  the  world  of  the  concrete,  unique, 
and  altering  objects  that  play  on  our  organs  of  sense,  and  the  world  of 
the  abstract,  invariable  elements  that  physics  describes.  The  funda- 
mental spring  of  M.  Bergson's  objections  to  psychology  and  physics 
is  thus  the  fact  that  these  sciences  do  not  absolutely  resemble,  that  is, 
coincide  with,  their  objects.  From  the  condemnation  of  the  sciences 
of  mind  and  matter  on  this  score  an  easy  step  brings  one  to  the  con- 
demnation of  all  natural  science  on  the  same  ground;  and  the  taking 
of  this  step  is  precisely  what  separates  A  n  Introduction  to  Metaphysics 
from  Matter  and  Memory. 

In  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  M.  Bergson  classes  all  scientific 
knowledge  as  relative  over  against  metaphysical  or  philosophical 
knowledge,  which  is  absolute.  He  leaves  to  scientific  knowledge  a 
certain  qualified  validity  and  is  less  severe  in  condemning  natural 
science  as  a  whole  than  he  was  in  condemning  analytical  psychology 


LOGIC     OF      BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY  49 

in  Time  and  Free-Will,  for  naturally  the  validity  of  physics  is  more 
difficult  to  explain  away  than  whatever  validity  associationistic  psy- 
chology may  be  said  to  possess.  That  the  reasons  for  M.  Bergson's 
refusal  to  admit  that  the  knowledge  furnished  by  any  natural  science  is 
philosophically  genuine  are  the  same  as  his  reasons  for  objecting  to 
psychology  and  physics,  however,  can  without  difficulty  be  shown  by 
reference  to  numerous  passages  in  his  book. 

M.  Bergson  introduces  the  argument  of  An  Introduction  to  Meta- 
physics with  the  statement  that  philosophers  agree  in  distinguishing 
two  profoundly  different  ways  of  knowing  a  thing:  a  relative  way 
and  an  absolute.  Relative  knowledge,  he  pursues,  implies  that  from  a 
point  of  view  external  to  the  object  we  express  the  object  by  means  of 
symbols;  whereas  absolute  knowledge  is  dependent  on  no  symbol 
(p.  i),  but  implies  the  insertion  (p.  2)  of  the  subject  into  the  object  by 
imagination,  the  identification  (p.  3)  of  subject  with  object  in  a  simple 
feeling,  or,  in  another  word,  the  "coincidence"  (p.  4)  of  the  knowing 
subject  with  what  is  known.  Relative  knowledge  (p.  7)  is  acquired  by 
analysis;  absolute  knowledge,  on  the  contrary,  by  "intuition."  Analy- 
sis, M.  Bergson  says  (p.  7),  is  the  operation  which  reduces  the  object 
to  elements  common  to  both  it  and  to  other  objects,  and  intuition  is 
that  by  which  one  places  oneself  within  an  object  in  order  to  coin- 
cide with  what  is  unique  in  it  and  consequently  inexpressible. 

It  is  obvious  that  we  are  dealing  here  with  a  generalization  of  the 
distinction  made  by  M.  Bergson  between  the  anti-material  psychology 
and  the  ordinary  psychology  of  Time  and  Free-Will,  and  the  meta- 
physics of  matter  and  the  science  of  physics  in  Matter  and  Memory. 
If  we  note  what  the  subject-matter  of  absolute  or  intuitive  knowledge 
is  given  as,  in  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics,  we  shall  have  further 
evidence  that  the  book  formulates  epistemological  assumptions  that 
were  implicit  in  M.  Bergson's  preceding  work.  He  describes  intuition 
(p.  9)  as  the  instrument  by  which  we  seize  on  our  own  personality,  on 
our  self  which  endures,  if  on  nothing  else.  This  self  as  given  in  intuition 
is  (p.  1 1)  a  "continuous  flux"  in  which  all  so-called  states  interpenetrate; 
it  is  a  "pure  duration"  (p.  13)  in  which  no  two  identical  moments  (p.  12) 
occur;  something  not  capable  of  being  represented  by  concepts  (p.  15), 
that  is,  "abstract "or  "general"  ideas,  nor  even  by  images,  although 
images  have  the  advantage  over  concepts  (p.  16)  of  keeping  us  in  the 
concrete.  In  most  men  the  awareness  of  their  own  consciousness  is 
"fettered  by  habits  of  mind  more  useful  to  life"  (p.  16).  Abstract 
ideas  symbolize  the  impersonal  aspects  of  objects;  they  generalize, 
and  hence  "  .  .  .  are  incapable  of  replacing  intuition,  that  is,  the 
metaphysical  investigation  of  what  is  essential  and  unique  in  the  object" 


50  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

(p.  1 8).  "  .  .  .  analysis  operates  always  on  the  immobile,  whilst 
intuition  places  itself  in  mobility,  or  what  comes  to  the  same  thing,  in 
duration.  There  lies  the  very  distinct  line  of  demarcation  between 
intuition  and  analysis.  The  real,  the  experienced,  and  the  concrete 
are  recognized  by  the  fact  that  they  are  variability  itself"  (p.  47). 

If  the  intuitional  science  of  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  is  a  gen- 
eralization not  only  of  the  anti-material  psychology  of  Time  and  Free- 
Will,  but  of  the  metaphysics  of  matter  of  Matter  and  Memory  as  well, 
we  should  be  able  to  show  that  matter,  for  intuition,  is  a  form  of  dura- 
tion: a  perceived  object  different  from  our  ordinary  perception  in  not 
being  thickened  by  the  pressure  of  memory.  "  .  .  .if  intuition 
has  the  mobility  of  duration  as  its  object,"  writes  M.  Bergson,  "and 
if  duration  is  of  a  psychical  nature,  shall  we  not  be  confining  the 
philosopher  to  the  exclusive  contemplation  of  himself"  (p.  55)?  No. 
"The  consciousness  we  have  of  our  own  self  in  its  continual  flux 
introduces  us  to  the  interior  of  a  reality,  on  the  model  of  which  we 
must  represent  other  realities"  (p.  65).  "  .  .  .  the  intuition 
of  our  duration,  far  from  leaving  us  suspended  in  the  void  as  pure 
analysis  would  do,  brings  us  into  contact  with  a  whole  continuity  of 
durations  which  we  must  try  to  follow,  whether  downwards  or  upwards 
.  .  .  In  both  cases  we  transcend  ourselves.  In  the  first  we  advance 
towards  a  more  and  more  attenuated  duration,  the  pulsations  of 
which,  being  rapider  than  ours,  and  dividing  our  simple  sensation, 
dilute  its  quality  into  quantity;  at  the  limit  would  be  pure  homogene- 
ity, that  pure  repetition  by  which  we  define  materiality.  Advancing  in 
the  other  direction,  we  approach  a  duration  which  .  .  .  intensifies 
itself  more  and  more;  ...  at  the  limit  would  be  eternity"  (p.  63). 

Intuitional  metaphysics  is  distinguished  from  positive  science,  in  its 
original  definitions,  at  least,  by  the  same  traits  that  distinguish  M. 
Bergson 's  earlier  more  special  sciences  of  the  immediate  from  the 
sciences  he  would  have  had  them  replace.  Metaphysics  is  not  an 
"expression,  translation,  or  symbolic  representation"  (p.  9)  of  its  ob- 
ject; it  is  not  "useful"  (p.  16);  not  an  "artificial  reconstruction  of  its 
object"  (p.  18);  not  a  "shadow"  (p.  19);  it  is  "disinterested"  (p.  40), 
"a  reversal  of  the  usual  work  of  the  intellect"  (p.  40) ;  it  is  independent 
of  "homogeneous  time"  (p.  46),  and  of  homogeneous  space  (p.  52), 
and  it  does  not  represent  to  itself  states  and  things  by  fixing  the  undi- 
vided mobility  of  the  real  (p.  65),  as  do  language,  common  sense,  and 
practical  life"  (p.  66).  Significantly,  at  the  same  time  that  he  includes 
all  positive  scientific  knowledge  in  the  class  of  relative,  philosophically 
imperfect  knowledge,  M.  Bergson  grants  to  psychology  the  right  to 
the  use  of  analysis.  "Psychology  .  .  .  proceeds  like  all  the  other 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSON     S     PHILOSOPHY  5! 

sciences  by  analysis.  It  resolves  the  self  .  .  .  into  sensations, 
feelings,  ideas,  etc.  .  .  ."  (p.  24).  '  .  .  .  without  this  effort  of 
abstraction  or  analysis  there  would  be  no  possible  development  of  the 
science  of  psychology"  (p.  25).  "On  the  level  at  which  the  psycholo- 
gist places  himself,  and  on  which  he  must  place  himself  .  .  .  ' 
there  is  "nothing  else  to  do  but  analyze  personality  .  .  ."  (p.  30). 

Thus  it  is  here  M.  Bergson's  view  that  all  of  the  natural  sciences  are 
valuable  and  adequate  as  natural  sciences,  but  that  since  the  unique- 
ness and  concreteness  of  experience  escape  from  the  formulations  of 
science,  something  else,  metaphysics,  must  be  found  to  capture  what 
concepts  are  unable  to  fix.  It  is  the  thesis  of  this  dissertation  that  in 
the  course  of  his  successive  attempts  to  tell  what  such  an  epistemo- 
logically  necessitated  science  of  the  complete  concrete  unique  imme- 
diate would  be  M.  Bergson  invariably  falls  back  on  some  aspect  of  the 
ordinary  science  he  condemns  and  that  this  renunciation  of  the  strict 
definition  of  his  supplementary  science,  tells,  in  a  measure,  against  the 
theory  of  knowledge  in  which  the  notion  that  subject  knows  object 
in  the  degree  of  their  resemblance  had  its  start.  It  remains,  conse- 
quently, for  us  to  show  that  the  intuitional  science  of  An  Introduction 
to  Metaphysics  is  identified,  in  the  progress  of  M.  Bergson's  exposition, 
with  the  positive  science  from  which,  theoretically,  it  should  be  dis- 
tinct. 

M.  Bergson  defines  metaphysics  as  the  science  which  claims  to 
dispense  with  symbols  (p.  9).  '  .  .  .  the  main  object  of  meta- 
physics is  to  do  away  with  symbols"  (p.  79). 8  But  he  modifies  this 
view  elsewhere,  saying  that  true  empiricism,  which  is  the  true  meta- 
physics (p.  36)  "  .  .  .is  obliged  for  each  new  object  that  it  studies 
to  make  an  absolutely  fresh  effort.  It  cuts  out  for  the  object  a  concept 
which  is  appropriate  to  that  object  alone,  a  concept  which  as  yet  can 
hardly  be  called  a  concept  .  .  ."  (p.  37).  '  .  .  .  metaphysics 
.  .  .  if  it  is  a  serious  occupation  of  the  mind  .  .  .  must  transcend 
concepts.  .  .  .  Certainly  concepts  are  necessary  to  it,  for  all  the 
other  sciences  work  as  a  rule  with  concepts,  and  metaphysics  can  not 
dispense  with  the  other  sciences.  But  it  is  only  truly  itself  when  it 
goes  beyond  the  concept,  or  at  least  when  it  frees  itself  from  rigid  and 
ready-made  concepts  .  .  ."  (p.  21). 

At  one  time  M.  Bergson  writes  as  though  the  use  of  intuition 
marked  off  metaphysics  from  science  (p.  30);  at  another  he  speaks 
of  positive  science  as  passing  "immediately  to  analysis"  on  getting 
its  material  from  an  intuition  which  "one  must  add"  is  "very  indis- 

«  Cf.  pp.  15,  18,  30. 


52  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

tinct"  (p.  32).  But  again  he  explains  that  as  to  the  relativity  of  scien- 
tific knowledge,  "what  is  relative  is  the  symbolic  knowledge  by  pre- 
existing concepts  .  .  ."  (p.  74).  "Science  and  metaphysics  .  .  . 
come  together  in  intuition.  A  truly  intuitive  philosophy  would  .  .  . 
make  of  metaphysics  a  positive  science  .  .  .  '  '  ...  all  that 
is  greatest  in  the  sciences,  as  well  as  all  that  is  permanent  in  meta- 
physics" (p.  70)  is  due  to  intuition  (p.  69) .9  Yet,  in  the  early  portion 
of  his  exposition  (p.  24)  the  "confusion  between  the  function  of 
analysis  and  that  of  intuition  "  is  spoken  of  as  the  chief  source  of  philo- 
sophical controversies.  Although  in  certain  passages  M.  Bergson 
separates  metaphysics  from  positive  science  by  confining  science  to  a 
consideration  of  what  is  immobile  and  unreal,10  in  other  passages  he 
writes  of  positive  science  as  working  in  the  real  and  mobile.11  Thus 
there  are  sometimes  two  varieties  of  knowledge,  sometimes  all  knowl- 
edge is  one:  "A  comparison  of  the  definitions  of  metaphysics 
.  .  .  leads  to  the  discovery  that  philosophers,  in  spite  of  their 
apparent  divergencies,  agree  in  distinguishing  two  profoundly  different 
ways  of  knowing  a  thing.  .  .  .  The  first  depends  on  the  point  of 
view  at  which  we  are  placed  and  on  the  symbols  by  which  we  express 
ourselves.  The  second  neither  depends  on  a  point  of  view  nor  relies 
on  any  symbol"  (p.  i).  M.  Bergson  goes  on  to  attach  the  name  of 
metaphysics  to  this  second  sort  of  knowledge,  as  we  observed  above. 
But  later  on  (p.  74),  he  speaks  of  the  need  of  putting  more  science  into 
metaphysics  and  more  metaphysics  into  science.  Finally  he  says  (p. 
75),  "That  there  are  not  two  different  ways  of  knowing  things  funda- 
mentally ...  is  what  the  ancient  philosophers  generally  thought. 
Their  error  did  not  lie  there." 

Looking  over  the  aspects  of  positive  science  with  which  M.  Bergson 
identifies  intuitional  science,  when  he  gives  up  his  strict  definition  of 
metaphysics,  we  find  that  metaphysics  becomes  identified  sometimes 
with  a  fragment  of  the  doctrine  of  positive  science,  as  with  the  infi- 
nitesimal calculus  (p.  70),  or  with  "modern  mathematics,"  which  "is 
precisely  an  effort  to  substitute  the  being  made  for  the  ready  made 
.  .  .  to  grasp  motion  no  longer  from  without  and  in  its  displayed 
result,  but  from  within  and  in  its  tendency  to  change ;  in  short  to  adopt 
the  mobile  continuity  of  the  outlines  of  things."  12  Or  again,  meta- 
physics is  identified  with  the  original  strokes  of  genius  that  enabled 
men  of  intellect  to  advance  positive  science:  "  .  .  .a  profoundly- 
considered  history  of  human  thought  would  show  that  we  owe  to" 

9  Cf.  pp.  81,  82,  83. 

1°  See  pp.  26,  27,  43,  44,  45,  46,  47.  48,  62,  67. 
«C/.  pp.  75,  76,  87. 
^Cf.  p.  77. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  53 

(p.  70)  the  inversion  of  our  habitual  or  practical  habits  of  thought  "all 
that  is  greatest  in  the  sciences  .  .  .  "  13  Finally,  M.  Bergson 
identifies  metaphysics  (p.  90)  with  a  state  of  the  mind  reached -by 
means  of  a  study  of  the  "sum  of  observations  and  experience  gathered 
together  by  positive  science"  (p.  91);  "something  in  philosophers" 
(p.  88)  and  not  "fixed  and  dead  in  theses."  We  shall  now  prosecute 
the  investigation  of  intuitional  metaphysics,  and  of  the  manner  of  its 
renunciation,  in  Creative  Evolution  and  in  one  or  two  of  the  occasional 
addresses  of  M.  Bergson. 

(3)    CREATIVE  EVOLUTION 

Creative  Evolution  illustrates  in  two  ways  M.  Bergson's  renunciation 
of  the  strict  definition  of  his  metaphysical  or  intuitional  science.  First 
the  renunciation  is  presented  in  terms  which  are  nearly  identical  with 
the  terms  in  which  he  formulated  the  doctrine  of  his  preceding  work; 
and  secondly  it  is  presented  in  terms  of  a  theory  of  evolutionary  biol- 
ogy. To  begin  with  we  shall  point  out  the  biological  aspect  of  the 
subject  of  our  study,  and  then  briefly  indicate  the  passages  in  which 
the  contradictions  common  to  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  and 
Creative  Evolution  may  be  found. 

In  his  biological  theory  M.  Bergson  identifies  the  activity  of  instinct, 
especially  as  manifested  in  the  life  of  certain  species  of  insects,  with 
the  intuition  which  separates  metaphysics  from  positive  science. 
'  .  .  .  instinct  and  intelligence  imply  two  radically  different  kinds 
of  knowledge"  (p.  143).  "Intelligence  by  means  of  science  which  is 
its  work,  will  deliver  up  to  us  more  and  more  completely  the  secret  of 
physical  operations;  of  life  it  brings  us,  and  moreover  only  claims  to 
bring  us,  a  translation.  But  it  is  to  the  very  inwardness  of  life  that 
intuition  leads  us  .  .  .by  intuition  I  mean  instinct  that  has  become 
disinterested,  self-conscious,  capable  of  reflecting  upon  its  object  and 
of  enlarging  it  indefinitely"  (p.  176).  "The  theory  of  knowledge  must 
take  account  of  these  two  faculties,  intellect  and  intuition  .  .  .for 
want  of  establishing  a  sufficiently  clear  distinction  between  them  it 
becomes  involved  in  inextricable  difficulties"  (p.  178).  Now  first  of 
all  it  will  be  shown  that  the  distinction  M.  Bergson  draws  between 
instinct  and  intelligence  is  epistemological  rather  than  biological  in 
origin,  since  the  distinction  is  not  required  by  M.  Bergson's  biological 
philosophy,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  in  opposition  thereto. 

What  biological  arguments  are  advanced  in  Creative  Evolution  in 
favor  of  radically  distinguishing  instinct  from  intelligence  in  connec- 

IJC/.  pp.  31.  32.  86.  87. 


54  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

tion  with  the  theory  of  knowledge?  In  a  great  many  passages  of  his 
book  M.  Bergson  reasons  sub-audibly  that  since  evolution  is  a  differ- 
entiation along  lines  that  diverge,  the  process  of  vital  development 
necessarily  grew  into  diverse  modes  of  knowing.  "The  cardinal  error 
which,  from  Aristotle  onwards,  has  vitiated  most  of  the  philosophies  of 
nature,"  he  says,  "is  to  see  in  vegetative,  instinctive,  and  rational 
life,  three  successive  degrees  of  the  development  of  one  and  the  same 
tendency,  whereas  they  are  divergent  directions  of  an  activity  that 
has  split  up  as  it  grew"  (p.  135).  Our  reason  for  believing  that  the 
view,  according  to  which  life  evolves  into  forms  which  exhibit  dis- 
similar modes  of  noetic  activity  is  by  no  means  essential  or  even 
natural  in  M.  Bergson's  biology,  is  to  be  found  in  the  general  trend  of 
his  contentions  concerning  the  character  of  life.  The  course  of  bio- 
logical development  as  described  by  himself  is  a  continual  elaboration 
of  certain  originally  interpenetrating  potentialities  or  tendencies,  which 
spread  and  unfold  into  innumerable  forms;  nevertheless,  inasmuch 
as  life  is  single  in  its  origin,  the  end-products  of  evolution  are  supposed 
to  participate  in  a  common  character.  '  .  .  .  when  species  have 
begun  to  diverge  .  .  .  they  accentuate  their  divergence  as  they 
progress.  .  .  .  Yet,  in  certain  definite  points  they  may  evolve 
identically;  in  fact,  they  must  do  so  if  the  hypothesis  of  a  common 
impetus  be  accepted"  (p.  87).  Indeed  the  very  argument  by  which  M. 
Bergson  aims  to  refute  mechanism  in  biology  depends  on  his  demon- 
stration that  the  various  developments  of  life  may  eventuate  in  like 
organs,  expressive  of  an  identical  underlying  impulse  which  breaks  out 
at  very  distantly  separated  points  of  time  and  space.14  Thus  it  is 
argued  that  although  no  complicated  visual  organ  had  appeared  at 
that  point  of  the  geneological  tree  of  life  where  the  ancestors  of  verte- 
brates and  molluscs  parted  company  with  one  another,  the  eye  in  man 
and  in  the  pecten  present  an  astonishing  similarity  of  structure,  and 
that  consequently  the  essential  uniformity  of  life  has  been  proved. 
If  it  should  be  objected  to  our  exposition  that  vertebrates  and  molluscs 
are  nearer  akin  than  men  and  wasps  or  similar  insects,  it  could  be 
answered  that,  although  animals  and  plants  are  still  more  remote  from 
each  other  than  molluscs  and  vertebrates,  M.  Bergson  mentions  (p.  59) 
the  parallel  progress  that  has  been  accomplished  in  the  animal  and 
vegetable  divisions  of  evolution  in  the  direction  of  sexuality,  as  evi- 
dence supporting  his  theory  of  the  homogeneity  of  life.  Moreover, 
if  there  is  no  innate  tendency  in  the  various  branches  of  developing 
life  towards  the  elaboration  of  dissimilar  faculties  of  reproduction,  the 
tendency  towards  diversity  would  be  even  less  likely  to  manifest  itself 

14  See  pp.  54,  55,  56,  87,  96,  112. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  55 

in  the  faculty  of  understanding,  which,  in  M.  Bergson's  own  words  is 
1  ...  a  more  and  more  precise  .  .  .  and  supple  adaptation  of 
the  consciousness  of  living  beings  to  the  conditions  of  existence  that 
are  made  for  them"  (p.  ix).  For  must  not  insects  and  vertebrates  adapt 
themselves  to  similar  conditions  of  life?  We  conclude,  then,  that  it  is 
not  the  investigation  of  biological  facts  that  led  M.  Bergson  to  regard 
instinct  as  a  kind  of  philosophical  intuition,  but  that  he  has  introduced 
foregone  epistemological  conclusions,  formulated  in  An  Introduction 
to  Metaphysics,  into  his  treatment  of  biology. 

Taking  it  for  granted  that  the  distinction  drawn  between  instinct 
and  intelligence  in  Creative  Evolution  is.a  transposition  of  the  distinc- 
tion established  in  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  between  intuition 
and  intellect,  we  proceed  to  note  the  marks  by  which  instinct  is  con- 
tradistinguished from  intelligence  in  the  context  of  M.  Bergson's 
biology.  When  he  fulfilled  the  requirements  of  his  initial  epistemo- 
logical assumptions,  M.  Bergson  assigned  the  task  of  knowing  concrete 
uniqueness  or  duration  or  mobility  to  intuition.  In  the  same  vein  it 
is  written  in  Creative  Evolution  that  "In  order  to  get  at  ...  [the 
cardinal  difference  between  instinct  and  intelligence]  we  must  .  .  . 
go  straight  to  the  two  objects,  profoundly  different  from  each  other, 
upon  which  instinct  and  intelligence  are  directed"  (p.  146).  "Of  im- 
mobility alone  does  the  intellect  form  a  clear  idea"  (p.  155).  "The 
intellect  is  not  made  to  think  evolution,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word 
—that  is  to  say,  the  continuity  of  a  change  that  is  pure  mobility"  (p. 
163).  "The  intellect  is  characterized  by  a  natural  inability  to  com- 
prehend life.  Instinct,  on  the  contrary,  is  molded  on  the  very  form 
of  life"  (p.  165).  "Instinct  is  sympathy.  If  this  sympathy  could 
extend  its  object  and  also  reflect  upon  itself,  it  would  give  us  the  key 
to  vital  operations  .  .  .  just  as  intelligence,  developed  and  disci- 
plined, guides  us  into  matter.  For — we  can  not  too  often  repeat  it — 
intelligence  and  instinct  are  turned  in  opposite  directions,  the  former 
towards  inert  matter,  the  latter  towards  life"  (p.  176).  "The  double 
form  of  consciousness  is  ...  due  to  the  double  form  of  the  real 
.  .  .  "  (p.  178).  Now,  just  as  in  A n  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  we 
found  M.  Bergson  giving  up  his  distinction  between  the  metaphysics 
of  pure  duration  and  the  positive  science  of  abstractions  or  repetitious 
elements  in  experience,  so  here  instinct  and  intelligence,  separated 
rigorously  in  the  above-cited  passages,  are  united  again  in  other  clearly 
phrased  portions  of  M.  Bergson's  text.  Reversing  his  proposition  that 
the  knowledges  of  matter  and  of  life  fall  to  intelligence  and  instinct, 
respectively,  M.  Bergson  says  "  .  .  .  we  see  in  these  two  modes  of 
psychical  activity  [instinct  and  intelligence]  above  all  else,  two 


56  L  O  G  I  C     O  F 

different  methods  of  action  on  inert  matter"  (p.  136).  Again :  "  Instinct 
and  intelligence  .  .  .  represent  two  divergent  solutions,  equally 
fitting,  of  one  and  the  same  problem"  (p.  143).  [The  problem  of 
action.] 

We  may  expect  that  in  discussing  the  methods  of  biology  and 
the  value  of  ordinary  biological  science  M.  Bergson  will  shift  from 
the  contention  that  ordinary  analytical  biology  is  inadequate  to  its 
object,  to  the  admission  that  instinctive  or  intuitive  metaphysics  is  no 
scientific  substitute  for  positive  science,  but  something  of  a  quite 
different  sort.  In  fact,  M.  Bergson  tells  us  (p.  198)  that  conceptual 
physics  touches  the  absolute,  but  that-  "  .  .  .  it  is  by  accident — 
chance  or  convention,  as  you  please — that  science  obtains  a  hold  on 
the  living  analogous  to  the  hold  it  has  on  matter.  Here  the  use  of  con- 
ceptual frames  is  no  longer  natural  .  .  .  the  further  [science]  .  .  . 
penetrates  the  depths  of  life,  the  more  symbolic,  the  more  relative  to 
the  contingencies  of  action  the  knowledge  it  supplies  to  us  becomes. 
On  this  new  ground,  philosophy  ought,  then,  to  follow  science  in  order 
to  superpose  on  scientific  truth  a  knowledge  of  another  kind,  which 
may  be  called  metaphysical."  15  From  having  followed  M.  Bergson's 
attempt  to  formulate  into  a  scientific  or  metaphysical  knowledge  the 
naked  fact  that  immediate  experience  is  undivided  and  novel  in  its 
unrationalized  phases  we  are  enabled  to  anticipate  the  nature  of  his 
proposed  substitute  or  complement  for  scientific  biology,  which  is  an 
experience,  namely,  of  the  pure  quality,  or  duration,  or  genuine  con- 
sciousness, of  Matter  and  Memory  and  Time  and  Free-Will.  In  order 
to  transcend  intelligence,  for  the  purpose  of  apprehending  life,  it  is 
thus  proposed  that  we  "  .  .  .  seek  in  the  depths  of  our  experience 
the  point  where  we  feel  ourselves  most  intimately  within  our  own  life. 
It  is  into  pure  duration  that  we  then  plunge  back"  (p.  199).  And  there 
we  find  a  past  " swelling  unceasingly"  and  moving  on  into  a  ''present 
that  is  absolutely  new"  (p.  200).  We  are  told  to  seek  ourselves  where 
"our  actions  are  truly  free,"  and  thus  to  replace  ourselves  in  life;  a  life 
which  is  a  state  of  consciousness  "incommensurable  with  the  intellect, 
being  itself  indivisible  and  new." 

M.  Bergson  sometimes  argues  in  general  that  intelligence  can  not 
know  life  because  intelligence,  which  has  been  molded  on  matter  for 
the  sake  of  action,  differs  from  life  as  the  part  from  the  whole  (p.  x), 
and,  consequently,  can  not  be  "applied  to  the  evolutionary  movement 
itself. "  And  he  argues  in  particular  that  since  intelligence  and  instinct 
are  differentiated  parts  of  a  whole  (p.  174),  instinct  is  not  "resolvable 
into  intelligent  elements,"  or  even  "into  terms  entirely  intelligible." 

»  Cf.  pp.  174.  175,  196,  197,  207,  342,  343,  359,  360. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  57 

It  is  in  "the  phenomena  of  feeling"  ...  he  continues  (p.  175), 
that  "we  experience  in  ourselves  .  .  .  something  of  what  must 
happen  in  the  consciousness  of  an  insect  acting  by  instinct."  With 
this  evidence  that,  epistemologically  speaking,  M.  Bergson  still  clings 
to  the  resemblance-theory  of  knowledge,  we  go  on  to  note  that  the 
chief  difficulties  already  recorded  in  our  consideration  of  Time  and 
Free- Will,  Matter  and  Memory,  and  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics 
reappear  in  the  course  of  Creative  Evolution. 

These  chief  difficulties  uniformly  grow  out  of  the  fact  that  although 
the  abstract  terms  of  all  of  the  natural  sciences  are  discrepant  in  kind 
from  their  subject-matter — concrete  immediate  experience — M.  Berg- 
son  infers  from  his  observation  of  this  discrepancy  that  natural  science 
is  not  genuinely  scientific,  reasoning  from  the  premise  that  knowledge 
must  copy  its  object.  At  first  M.  Bergson  accepted  conceptual  physics 
as  adequate  on  the  supposition  that  physics  is  not  a  science  of  imme- 
diate experience,  and  confined  his  attack  on  science  to  associationistic 
psychology.  But  on  admitting  immediate  experience  to  be  extended 
he  was  led  to  condemn  ordinary,  physics  as  well,  since  physics  resembles 
psychology  in  being  abstract.  From  the  citations  above  in  which 
M.  Bergson  lays  it  down  that  intelligence  is  naturally  adapted  to 
matter,  it  might  have  appeared  that  he  had  established  himself  in  a 
view  dissimilar  to  the  general  view  expressed  in  An  Introduction  to 
Metaphysics,  according  to  which  all  analytical  or  symbolical  knowl- 
edge is  relative  and  unsatisfactory  in  part.  But  he  writes  of  intelli- 
gence as  providing  a  genuine  philosophical  knowledge  of  the  material 
world  only  when  he  treats  of  action  as  being  a  function  of  life  really 
exercised  in  a  portion  of  reality  endowed  with  the  characteristics  to 
which  our  activity  relates.  Thus:  "  .  .  .  our  intellect, "  he  writes 
(p.  ix),  "  .  .  .  is  intended  to  secure  the  perfect  fitting  of  our  body 
to  its  environment,  to  represent  the  relations  of  external  things  among 
themselves — in  short,  to  think  matter."  "Action  can  not  move  in 
the  unreal  ...  an  intellect  bent  upon  the  act  to  be  performed  and 
the  reaction  to  follow  .  .  .  is  an  intellect  that  touches  something 
of  the  absolute"  (p.  xi).16  And  when,  on  the  other  hand,  M.  Bergson 
is  reasoning  from  the  premise  of  the  resemblance  epistemology  in 
which  he  persists,  he  reverts  to  the  view,  expounded  in.  An  Introduc- 
tion to  Metaphysics,  that  all  species  of  conceptual  science  are  false, 
reversing  his  estimate  of  the  epistemological  value  of  physical  science. 
For  instance,  "From  mobility  itself, "  he  tells  us  (p.  155),  "our  intellect 
turns  aside,  because  it  has  nothing  to  gain  in  dealing  with  it.  If  the 
intellect  were  meant  for  pure  theorizing,  it  would  take  its  place  within 

16  Cf.  pp.  198  and  207. 


58  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

movement,  for  movement  is  reality  itself  .  .  .  But  ...  to  the 
stable  and  unchangeable  our  intellect  is  attached  by  virtue  of  its 
natural  disposition. "  "Matter  or  mind, "  M.  Bergson  writes  in  another 
passage  (p.  272),  "reality  has  appeared  to  us  as  a  perpetual  becoming. 

.  .  .  Such  is  the  intuition  that  we  have  of  mind  when  we  draw 
aside  the  veil  which  is  interposed  between  our  consciousness  and  our- 
selves. This,  also,  is  what  our  intellect  and  senses  themselves  would 
show  us  of  matter,  if  they  could  obtain  a  direct  and  disinterested  idea 
of  it.  But,  preoccupied  before  everything  with  the  necessities  of 
action,  the  intellect,  like  the  senses,  is  limited  to  taking,  at  intervals, 
views  that  are  instantaneous  and  by  that  very  fact  immobile  of  the 
becoming  of  matter." 

We  noted  that  in  Matter  and  Memory  the  action  to  which  M.  Berg- 
son  ascribes  the  role  of  falsifying  our  knowledge  of  things  is  a  philo- 
sophical element  of  indeterminate  locus.  This  indetermination  takes 
its  rise,  in  the  final  analysis,  in  the  fact  that  there  is  no  room,  on  M. 
Bergson's  epistemological  premises,  in  either  matter  or  mind,  for  any 
source  of  the  falsification  of  immediate  experience;  since  the  genuine 
matter  and  mind  of  M.  Bergson's  dualism  coincide  with  each  other 
in  what  is  immediate.  Action,  as  long  as  action  is  regarded  as  possess- 
ing the  properties  that  falsify  reality,  is  transferred  from  matter  to 
mind  and  from  mind  to  matter,  according  to  the  circumstances  of 
M.  Bergson's  discussion.  Similarly,  in  Creative  Evolution,  as  long  as 
the  epistemological  motive  dominates  the  course  of  his  thought,  it  is 
impossible  to  trace  the  characteristics  of  action,  that  appear  in  reality 
as  falsifications,  to  any  permanent  position  in  the  world  of  M.  Berg- 
son's philosophical  discourse.  Taking  discontinuity  as  a  property  of 
reality  falsified,  we  find  it  contended  (p.  n)  that  were  action  sup- 
pressed, the  lines  traced  in  the  entanglement  of  the  real  would  disap- 
pear, and  bodies  would  be  reabsorbed  in  the  "universal  interaction 
which  ...  is  reality  itself."  '  .  the  subdivision  of  matter 

into  separate  bodies  is  relative  to  our  perception  .  .  ."  (p.  12). 
"Of  the  discontinuous  alone  does  the  intellect  form  a  clear  idea"  says 
M.  Bergson  (p.  154),  after  explaining  that  our  manipulations  require 
us  to  regard  the  material  object  as  "provisionally  final."  The  possi- 
bility of  our  doing  this,  he  continues,  is  due  to  the  continuity  of  mate- 
rial extension,  which  continuity,  in  turn,  "is  nothing  else  but  our 
ability  ...  to  choose  the  mode  of  discontinuity  we  shall  find  in 

.  .  .  [matter]."  Concepts  are  defined  (p.  160)  as  representations 
of  the  act  by  which  the  intellect  fixes  on  concrete  things.  Logic  is 
spoken  of  as  derived  from  solids.  "  .  .  .  the  intellect  behaves  as 
if  it  were  fascinated  by  the  contemplation  of  inert  matter.  It  is  life 


LOGIC     OF     BERGSONS     PHILOSOPHY  59 

looking  outward  .  .  .  adopting  the  ways  of  unorganized  nature 
.  .  .  in  order  to  direct  them  ..."  (p.  161),  "  .  .  .to 
modify  an  object  we  have  to  perceive  it  as  divisible  and  discontinu- 
ous" (p.  162).  Further,  M.  Bergson  explains  (p.  299)  that  since 
intellect  presides  over  actions,  and  only  the  results  of  actions  interest 
us,  we  overlook  the  movements  that  are  in  action,  seeing  only  (p.  300) 
the  image  of  the  movement  accomplished.  "Now  in  order  that  it 
may  represent  as  unmovable  the  result  of  the  act  which  is  being  accom- 
plished, the  intellect  must  perceive,  as  also  unmovable,  the  surround- 
ings in  which  this  result  is  being  framed. "  "In  order  that  our  activity 
may  leap  from  act  to  act,  it  is  necessary  that  matter  should  pass  from 
state  to  state  .  .  .  '  Finally,  M.  Bergson  writes:  "  .  .  .  that 
action  may  ...  be  enlightened,  intelligence  must  be  present  in  it, 
but  intelligence  in  order  thus  to  accompany  the  progress  of  activity 
.  .  .  must  begin  by  adopting  its  rhythm.  Action  is  discontinuous,  like 
every  pulsation  of  life;  discontinuous,  therefore,  is  knowledge"  (p.  307). 
Again,  we  find  that  the  novelty  of  reality  is  obscured  by  the  effect 
of  conduct  on  intellect  (p.  29).  "The  intellect  can  no  more  admit 
complete  novelty  than  real  becoming  .  .  .  here  again  it  lets  an 
essential  aspect  of  life  escape  .  .  ."  (p.  164).  It  applies  its  princi- 
ple "like  produces  like,"  which  constitutes  common  sense  (p.  29). 
"Science  carries  this  faculty  to  the  highest  possible  degree  of  exacti- 
tude and  precision,  but  does  not  alter  its  essential  character.  .  .  . 
Science  can  work  only  on  what  is  supposed  to  repeat  itself  ...  on 
what  is  withdrawn  .  .  .  from  the  action  of  real  time."  On  the 
other  hand,  in  another  connection,  M.  Bergson  writes:  *  .  .  .in 
the  field  of  physics  itself,  the  scientists  who  are  pushing  the  study  of 
their  science  furthest  incline  to  believe  that  we  can  not  reason  about 
the  parts  as  we  reason  about  the  whole.  .  .  .  Thereby  they  tend 
to  place  themselves  in  the  concrete  duration  in  which  alone  there  is 
true  generation  and  not  only  composition  of  parts"  (p.  368).  "The 
primal  function  of  perception  is  precisely  to  grasp  a  series  of  ... 
changes  under  the  form  of  a  .  .  .  simple  state,  by  a  work  of  con- 
densation" (p.  301).  But  scientific  analysis  resolves  these  states  into 
movements."  "  .  .  .  it  is  always  provisionally,  and  in  order  to 
satisfy  our  imagination,  that  we  attach  movement  to  a  mobile.  The 
mobile  flies  forever  before  the  pursuit  of  science,  which  is  concerned 
with  mobility  alone." 

So,  through  his  various  subject-matters  M.  Bergson  rings  the 
changes  made  possible  by  his  incompatible  premises.  On  the  assump- 
tion that  knowledge  must  resemble  its  object  he  condemns  analy- 


60  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

tical  psychology  in  Time  and  Free-Will  and  imagines  a  novel  psychol- 
ogy which  shall  reflect  the  immediate  and  be  the  opposite  of  what,  in 
general,  the  matter  of  physics  is,  on  which  the  mind  of  the  associa- 
tionistic  psychologists  was  modeled.  Hence,  two  novel  definitions 
of  mind — the  unanalyzed  immediate,  and  the  immediate  minus  what- 
ever matter  may  be.  When  attacking  the  doctrine  of  analytical  psy- 
chology M.  Bergson  opposes  to  the  doctrine  of  associationism  the 
simple  fact  that  the  immediate  does  not  present  itself  in  our  every-day 
awareness  as  already  analyzed  into  psychological  elements;  when  he 
undertakes  to  formulate  a  new  science  of  psychology  he  defines  the 
immediate  in  terms  of  what  he  considers  mind  can  not  be,  or,  in 
other  words,  of  what  matter  is.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  definition 
of  real  mind  by  negations  is  unenlightening,  and  in  the  event,  by  an 
indirect  process,  gets  altered  into  the  ascription  of  positive  attri- 
butes to  the  mind,  which  reduce  it  in  part  to  the  very  mind  that  M. 
Bergson  rejected  to  begin  with.  Again,  on  the  assumption  that  knowl- 
edge must  resemble  its  object,  in  Matter  and  Memory  the  material 
bodies  described  in  physics  are  condemned  as  artificially  selected  from 
the  continuity  of  experience  for  the  purposes  of  action,  and  a  meta- 
physics of  matter  is  proposed  that  defines  real  matter  as  unanalyzed 
immediate  experience,  or  as  a  complete  interaction  and  interpenetra- 
tion  of  all  of  the  contents  of  space.  In  the  measure  that  M.  Bergson 
proceeds  from  the  disparagement  of  ordinary  physics  to  the  attempt  to 
formulate  a  new  doctrine  of  matter,  by  so  much  does  he  proceed  from 
the  view  that  genuine  matter  is  simply  the  continuum  of  immediate 
experience  to  the  view  that  matter  is  immediate  experience  minus 
the  effect  of  the  mind  exerted  through  perception  and  memory.  But, 
once  more,  in  attempting  to  describe  what  the  immediate  would  be 
unenforced  and  unselected  by  memory  and  perception,  M.  Bergson 
falls  back  on  views  of  matter  proposed  by  the  exponents  of  stresses 
and  strains  in  the  ether,  or  lines  of  force,  which,  being  an  elaboration 
of  the  practical  science  of  ordinary  physics,  he  had  begun  by  rejecting. 
In  An  Introduction  to  Metaphysics  we  find  the  same  alteration  in  the 
definition  of  the  subject-matter  of  intuitional  metaphysics,  as  set  over 
against  the  subject-matter  of  positive  science.  When  M.  Bergson 
evaluates  conceptual  science  from  the  stand-point  of  epistemology, 
he  condemns  it  as  symbolic  in  all  its  parts,  and  the  subject-matter  of 
metaphysics  is  simply  immediate  experience  unvitiated  by  points  of 
view  or  by  symbols;  but  in  filling  in  the  definition  of  intuitional  meta- 
physics he  employs  aspects  of  positive  science  to  define  a  genuine 
immediate  experience  which  thus  is  assimilated  to  the  terms  of  science. 
Finally,  in  Creative  Evolution  when  the  distribution  of  the  elements 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  61 

of  M.  Bergson's  thought  is  determined  by  his  attack  on  science,  the 
reality  revealed  by  intuition  is  our  immediate  feeling  of  life;  but  when 
he  offers  an  intuitional  doctrine  of  reality,  on  the  other  hand,  his 
doctrine  of  reality  is  made  up  of  a  portion  of  ordinary  physics  and  of 
other  branches  of  positive  science. 

Summing  up  it  may  be  said  that  whenever  M.  Bergson  is  pressing 
his  attack  on  analytical,  selective,  conceptual  science,  pure  duration 
is  simply  immediate  experience;  but  that  whenever  he  is  trying  to 
build  up  an  intuitional  psychology,  physics,  or  biology,  pure  duration 
becomes  more  or  less  than  ordinary  concrete  experience.  The  former 
view  of  the  nature  of  pure  duration  is  best  expressed  in  M.  Bergson's 
address  on  La  Perception  du  Changement:  "  .  .  .in  answer  to 
those,"  writes  M.  Bergson  (p.  26),  "who  suppose  'real  duration' 
to  be  something  or  other  mysterious  and  ineffable,  I  say  that  it  is  the 
clearest  thing  in  the  world:  'real  duration'  is  what  has  always  been 
called  time,  but  time  perceived  as  indivisible."  Compare  with  this 
the  following  statement  from  Time  and  Free-  Will  (p.  106):  "  .  .  . 
we  find  it  incroyablement  difficile  to  think  of  duration  in  its  original 
purity."  Real  change  is  described  in  La  Perception  du  Changement 
(p.  27)  as  the  "most  substantial  and  durable  of  all  things,"  although 
in  defining  the  intuitional  method  in  Matiere  et  Memoire  (Avant- 
Propos,  p.  iii.)  M.  Bergson  speaks  of  interior  change,  which  is  duration, 
as  of  something  difficult  to  seize  in  its  "fleeting  originality."  True, 
the  contrary  view  of  the  nature  of  immediate  experience  is  presented 
in  more  than  one  passage  of  La  Perception  du  Changement,  as, 
for  instance,  where  the  ordinary  data  of  our  senses  and  of  consciousness 
are  asserted  to  be  "relative"  (p.  16). 

As  a  variation  of  the  shift  between  the  views  that  duration  is 
immediate  experience  and  that  it  is  the  movement  to  which  physics 
reduces  material  atoms,  we  may  compare  M.  Bergson's  statement 
in  La  Perception  du  Changement  (p.  25),  that  matter  is  proved  to  be 
really  mobility  by  physical  science,  with  the  statement  in  Time  and 
Free-Will  (p.  206),  that  the  movements  in  the  ether  to  which  atoms 
have  been  reduced  are  not  actual  movements ;"  .  .  .  all  movement 
taking  place  within  this  fluid  [the  ether]  is  really  equivalent  to  abso- 
lute immobility."  Besides  illustrating  the  ambiguities  and  contra- 
dictions to  which  we  have  become  accustomed  in  studying  M.  Berg- 
son's principal  works,  La  Perception  du  Changement  brings  out  into 
special  clearness  the  idea  from  which  we  have  maintained  that  all  of 
his  epistemological  writing  proceeds,  the  idea,  namely,  that  reality 
is  simply  unanalyzed  experience,  true  in  its  own  right,  and  that  it 
is  illegitimately  affected  by  the  action  of  concepts. 


62  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

Thus  M.  Bergson  writes  in  La  Perception  du  Changement  (p.  5)  that 
it  will  be  agreed  on  all  hands  that  if  our  faculty  of  perception  were 
unlimited  we  should  never  need  to  have  recourse  to  the  faculty  of 
reasoning.  Concepts  are  makeshift  substitutes  for  percepts,  he  says, 
useful  indeed,  but  sources  of  disturbance  in  philosophy.  The  task  of 
philosophy  (p.  8)  is  the  task  of  enlarging  and  purifying  perception. 
In  what  sense  is  perception  to  be  purified  and  enlarged?  Not  only 
by  the  reversal  of  our  practical  habits,  as  in  Creative  Evolution  and 
the  preceding  books,  but  somewhat  as  the  perception  of  poets  and 
musicians  and  painters  is  enlarged  by  their  impartial  observation  or 
intuition  of  reality.  By  this  means,  says  M-  Bergson,  it  shall  be 
brought  about  that  "The  multiplicity  of  conceptual  systems,  strug- 
gling against  each  other,  will  be  succeeded  by  a  solitary  doctrine 
capable  of  reconciling  all  thinkers  in  a  single  perception"  (p.  9). 
And  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe  that  if  the  truth  of  philosophy  inheres 
in  perception,  the  contradictory  answers  to  philosophy's  problems 
might  be  reconciled  in  M.  Bergson's  intuition,  since  philosophical 
problems  themselves  would,  on  this  theory  of  knowledge,  tend  like- 
wise to  disappear.  By  this  philosophy,  says  M.  Bergson  (p.  36), 
"We  live  more  amply,  and  this  superabundance  of  life  brings  with 
it  the  conviction  that  the  most  serious  enigmas  of  philosophy  can  be 
resolved,  or,  perhaps,  that  they  no  longer  exist,  being  born  of  a  stereo- 
typed vision  of  the  universe  .  .  .  of  a  certain  artificial  weakening 
of  our  vitality." 

This  attitude  towards  the  problems  of  philosophy  seems  seriously 
skeptical  in  its  explicit  tendency,  just  as  in  the  theory  of  knowledge 
elaborated  in  Time  and  Free-Will  and  Matter  and  Memory,  there  was 
an  implicit  skepticism,  since  the  coincidence  of  subject  and  object 
leaves  no  intervening  place  for  relevant  error.  M.  Bergson  condemns 
ordinary  science  because  it  falls  short  of  his  epistemological  require- 
ments, but  there  then  remains  to  him,  on  his  own  terms,  only  an 
absolute  immediate  which  can  hardly  be  true  or  false,  seeing  that  it 
is  not  in  relation  to  anything  else.  The  really  skeptical  upshot  of 
his  primary  assumptions  appears,  moreover,  in  L'Intuition  Philoso- 
phique  even  more  clearly  than  in  La  Perception  du  Changement. 

In  Time  and  Free-Will  we  observed  M.  Bergson  renouncing  the 
possibility  of  a  psychological  science  of  uniqueness  by  identifying  his 
novel  psychology  with  the  associationistic  or  analytical  theory  of 
mind;  and  in  his  subsequent  works  we  observed  a  repetition  of  the 
renunciation  of  the  science  of  uniqueness  as  strictly  conceived.  In 
L*  Intuition  du  Changement 17  not  only  does  M.  Bergson  once  more 

15  Rci'iie  de  Metaphysique  et  de  Morale,  Volume  19,  p.  809. 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  63 

renounce  his  distinction  between  intuitional  knowledge  and  positive 
science,  on  which  his  epistemology  rests,  but,  more  plainly  than 
elsewhere,  he  describes  the  subject-matter  of  intuition  as  ineffable, 
and  states  that  the  truly  philosophical  portion  of  a  system  of 
philosophy  is  the  expression  it  gives  to  the  uniqueness  of  its  author's 
personality. 

In  this  work  it  is  stated  (p.  823)  that  there  would  not  be  two  modes 
of  knowledge,  philosophy  and  science,  were  there  not  two  forms  of 
experience:  juxtaposed,  repetitious,  measurable  facts,  and  pure,  con- 
tinuous duration,  which  is  a  reciprocal  interpenetration  of  elements, 
refractory  to  law  and  measure.  Both  forms  of  experience  are  con- 
sciousness, in  the  one  case,  consciousness  expanded,  in  the  other,  con- 
sciousness contracted.  Philosophy  is  defined  (p.  824)  as  consciousness 
in  contact  with  the  contracted  form  of  itself.  The  renunciation  of 
this  distinction  is  given  in  the  further  statement  (p.  823)  that  when 
consciousness  contracts  and  gathers  itself  together  it  penetrates  not 
only  into  life  and  reality  in  general,  but  also  into  matter;  it  is  given 
again  when  M.  Bergson  says  (p.  824)  that  philosophy  is  not  only  a 
contact  with  concentrated  reality,  but  an  impulse  which  spreads  and 
overtakes  and  molds  itself  on  the  outline  of  science.  The  philosophical 
intuition  is  thus  from  this  point  of  view  analytical;  it  begins  in  unity 
and  expands. 

But,  returning  to  the  other  point  of  view,  according  to  which  phil- 
osophy is  a  contact  with  reality  gathered  up  into  itself,  or  simply 
reality  thus  concentrated,  we  discover  M.  Bergson  explaining  at  length 
(p.  810)  how,  by  a  patient  study  of  the  details  of  a  philosophical 
system,  one  may  approach  coincidence  with  the  original  intuition  of 
its  author.  Should  one  succeed  in  coinciding  with  a  philosophy  by 
this  synthetical  process,  the  philosophy  would  turn  out  to  be  something 
inexpressible  (p.  810);  something  less  tangible  than  an  "image  fuy ante 
et  evanouissante"  (p.  811);  something  not  veritably  connected  to  the 
temporal  and  spatial  conditions  to  which  it  seems  attached  (p.  812); 
something,  in  fine  (p.  812),  independent  of  other  philosophies  and  of 
positive  science  and  of  the  very  problems  on  which  the  philosopher 
was  engaged ;  the  science  and  the  problems  being  a  medium  of  expres- 
sion that  the  philosopher  chanced  to  adopt,  thanks  to  the  circum- 
stances of  his  birth.  Here  more  manifestly  than  anywhere  else,  we 
have  M.  Bergson  between  the  horns  of  his  own  dilemma:  if  philoso- 
phy and  science  are  not  distinct  modes  of  knowledge,  then  philosophi- 
cal intuition  tells  the  same  story  about  reality  as  positive  science;  if 
they  are  distinct,  philosophy's  deliverance  is  independent  of  observa- 
tion; it  is  personal  to  the  individual  philosopher  (since  the  problems 


64  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

of  science  and  philosophy  are  circumstantial  to  it),  and  it  is  incom- 
municable as  well. 

Let  us  now  gather  together  the  results  of  our  investigation  by 
stating  the  general  characteristics  of  M.  Bergson's  epistemology.  In 
the  light  of  the  preceding  evidence  we  consider  that  M.  Bergson's 
speculation  in  the  theory  of  knowledge  may  be  described  as  centrif- 
ugal. The  belief  that  knowledge  must  absolutely  resemble  its  object 
is  central  in  his  thought.  From  this  belief  he  infers  that  so-called 
knowledge  which  analyzes,  conceptualizes,  selects,  alters,  or  does  any- 
thing more  or  less  than  coincide  with  its  subject-matter,  must  be 
unsatisfactory  to  philosophy.  For  the  most  part  his  expositions  are 
an  attempt  to  demonstrate  that  scientific  and  ordinary  knowledge  is 
analytical  or  selective  or  conceptual  or  practical,  so  that,  in  the  detail 
of  his  work,  M.  Bergson  recedes,  in  as  many  directions  as  he  discovers 
positive  characteristics  of  scientific  knowledge,  from  his  central  belief. 
He  expiates  his  dereliction,  in  repeated  retrospects,  by  denying  that 
what  he  has  found  to  be  true  of  the  nature  of  knowledge  actually,  is 
true  from  the  philosopher's  point  of  view.  Hence  the  major  contra- 
dictions of  his  doctrine. 

For  example,  he  notices  that  psychology  analyzes  experience;  that 
language  itself  is  an  analysis  of  experience;  and  that  all  thought  about 
the  freedom  of  the  will  must  go  forward  in  terms  that  are  analytical. 
Having  demonstrated  these  facts  he  concludes  that  psychology  is  not 
really  psychology,  that  language  is  incommensurable  with  the  truth 
of  the  mind,  and  that  in  order  to  understand  the  freedom  of  the  will 
it  is  necessary,  as  a  preliminary,  to  give  up  thinking  about  the  question 
of  freedom  in  terms  of  thought.  Again,  he  defines  perception  and 
memory  by  the  selection  they  practise  in  the  material  of  experience; 
he  points  out  that  physics  interprets  experience  with  the  aid  of  an 
abstract  or  conceptual  space.  But  from  these  facts  he  concludes 
that  to  perceive  and  remember  correctly  or  philosophically,  one  must 
invert  or  undo  the  structure  or  habit  of  one's  mind ;  and  that  in  order 
to  be  genuinely  physics,  physics  must  forget  what  it  has  learned  of 
experience  by  the  employment  of  the  concept  of  space.  In  the  same 
way  M.  Bergson  reverts  from  the  fact  that  not  merely  psychology, 
but  that  all  natural  science  and  ordinary  knowledge  is  conceptual  in 
character,  to  the  inference  that  the  universal  employment  of  con- 
cepts proves  all  science  to  be  illegitimate  philosophically.  The  para- 
dox reappears  in  his  notion  that  man  coincides  with  his  own  life  and 
is  human  truly,  only  when  he  suppresses  his  proper  intellectual  nature 
and  expands  the  vestige  of  instinct,  which  M.  Bergson  considers  to 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY  65 

assimilate  vertebrates  to  insects,  into  a  coincidence  with  the  whole 
movement  of  life.  In  short  the  centrifugal  character  of  M.  Bergson's 
epistemology  leads  him  to  suppose  that  man  can  come  into  genuine 
contact  with  reality  only  by  ceasing  from  the  activities  that  determine 
man's  position  and  function  in  the  universe.  It  may  be  said  in  gen- 
eral, then,  that  M.  Bergson  throws  light  on  the  nature  of  knowledge 
when  the  theory  of  knowledge  does  not  preoccupy  his  mind;  that  his 
detailed  analyses  are  usually  valid,  but  that  his  conclusions  therefrom 
are  almost  invariably  false.  In  their  destructive  aspect  his  exposi- 
tions are  most  often  sound,  since  they  attack  the  assumption  that 
ordinary  knowledge  resembles  its  object;  in  their  constructive  aspect, 
on  the  other  hand,  his  expositions  are  inadmissible,  since  they  uniformly 
identify  some  property  of  positive  science,  transferred  ambiguously 
from  its  own  to  an  alien  context,  with  the  intuitional  knowledge  neces- 
sitated by  M.  Bergson's  original  premise. 

From  the  dualistic  point  of  view  the  centrifugal  character  of  M. 
Bergson's  epistemological  speculations  throws  light  on  a  number  of 
peculiarities  in  portions  of  his  work  which  have  been  left  unmentioned 
hitherto.  At  the  center  of  his  doctrine  the  belief  that  reality  is  incom- 
mensurable with  concepts  causes  M.  Bergson  to  define  reality  as  pure 
uniqueness  or  an  unintermitting  progress  into  novelty.  Having  begun 
by  criticizing  the  science  of  psychology  epistemologically,  M.  Bergson 
classifies  this  unique  reality  as  mind;  and  his  earliest  step  is  a  division 
of  the  terms  of  experience  into  a  new  dualistic  mind,  on  the  one  hand, 
which  comprises  no  more  than  uniqueness — denominated  pure  quality 
or  qualitative  multiplicity  or  genuine  duration  or  free-will;  and  into 
an  enlarged  material  division,  on  the  other  hand,  which  is  the  whole 
of  experience  minus  uniqueness.  As  M.  Bergson  recedes  from  his 
central  epistemological  assumption,  however,  by  showing  that  the 
several  sciences  of  experience  define  reality  in  conceptual  terms,  he 
is  forced  to  transfer  to  his  mental  division  of  dualism,  which  comprises 
reality,  the  terms  which  his  original  premise  forbade  to  be  there. 
Hence  he  describes  reality  as  becoming  what  it  should  never  be;  he 
treats  the  world  of  immediate  experience  where  uniqueness  and  quan- 
tity are  intermingled  or  confused,  as  an  illegitimate  portion  of  exis- 
tence whose  character  results  from  a  percolation  of  matter  into  mind, 
brought  about  by  habit  or  stupidity  or  practical  haste.  In  other 
words,  M.  Bergson  explains  the  immediate  by  combining  conceptual 
matter  and  conceptual  mind,  traversing,  in  this  way,  his  frequent 
contention  that  although  from  reality  to  concepts  the  passage  is 
possible,  there  can  be  no  passage  from  concepts  to  reality.  And  he 
is  forced  to  derive  experience  from  concepts,  in  spite  of  his  view  that 


66  LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

concepts  are  epistemologically  unsatisfactory  attenuations  of  the  real, 
inasmuch  as  he  undertakes  to  reform  philosophy  by  means  of  the 
dualistic  hypothesis,  according  to  which  there  is  a  separation  between 
the  object  and  subject  of  knowledge,  or  matter  and  mind,  though,  all 
the  time,  he  believes  that  knowledge,  to  be  genuine,  must  coincide 
with  its  subject-matter.  Now,  since  M.  Bergson  derives  the  impor- 
tant elements  of  his  philosophical  doctrine,  almost  without  exception, 
from  this  revision  of  the  dualistic  hypothesis,  the  fundamental  pecu- 
liarity of  his  epistemological  speculation  reappears  in  branches  of  his 
doctrine  which  might  seem  to  be  altogether  remote  from  the  theory 
of  knowledge. 

This  epistemological  property  of  his  doctrine  is  exemplified  in  his 
treatment  of  the  subject  of  chance.  Supposing  what  is  meant  by 
disorder  to  be  the  superposition  in  thought  of  the  vital  order,  or  unique- 
ness, on  the  material  order,  or  vice  versa,  M.  Bergson  concludes  that 
disorder  can  not  be  veritably  conceived ;  that  it  belongs,  that  is,  to  the 
illegitimate  region  of  confusion  between  the  divisions  of  dualism.  But 
in  essaying  further  to  reduce  the  notion  of  chance  to  this  confused  or 
illegitimate  idea  of  disorder,  M.  Bergson  draws  remarkably  near  to  the 
theory  of  universal  determinism,  which  is  opposed  to  his  fundamental 
theories  of  novelty  and  free-will  and  creative  evolution. 

M.  Bergson's  theory  of  laughter  provides  another  example  of  the 
cropping  up  of  the  difficulties  of  his  dualism  in  branches  of  investiga- 
tion apparently  remote  from  epistemology.  He  starts  out  from  the 
notion  that  laughter  is  a  corrector  of  manners,  inciting  the  members 
of  society  to  modes  of  behavior  conformable  to  the  varying  circum- 
stances of  community  life.  In  this  supposition  laughter  encourages  an 
elastic  adaptation  of  conduct  to  conditions  external  to  the  individual's 
existence.  The  theory  is  not  elaborated  in  its  integrity  by  M.  Bergson, 
however,  since  from  his  epistemological  assumption  that  reality  is 
pure  uniqueness,  he  gets  carried  on  to  the  hypothesis  of  a  life,  which, 
to  be  perfectly  real,  must  be  a  succession  of  unique  phases;  that  is  to 
say,  a  succession  of  attitudes  or  acts  that  can  not  be  adapted  to  a 
common  or  social  criterion,  or  to  groups  of  circumstances  that  present 
any  aspect  of  similarity.  A  parallel  difficulty  appears  in  M.  Bergson's 
esthetics.  On  the  basis  of  his  epistemological  metaphysics  he  states 
that  the  function  of  the  artist  is  to  express  the  unique  periods  of  his 
own  personality.  But  the  appreciation  of  a  work  of  art  can  not  then 
possibly  be  a  duplication  in  the  mind  of  another  person  of  the  expressed 
mood  of  the  artist,  since  the  original  mood  is  by  definition  unique,  and 
consequently  M.  Bergson  is  forced  to  maintain  that  really  to  appre- 
ciate a  painting,  for  instance,  is  not  to  see  what  its  creator  saw,  but 


LOGIC    OF    BERGSON'S  T  H-IT/Q  SOPHY          '  67 

to  be  encouraged  to  discern  in  one's  own  consciousness  something 
else.  This  difficulty  arises  from  the  fact  that  for  combinations  of 
repetition  and  novelty,  or  of  sameness  and  difference,  there  is  theo- 
retically no  place  in  M.  Bergson's  philosophy,  as  we  may  once  more 
note  in  connection  with  his  proposed  solution  of  the  eleatic  paradoxes. 
Since  the  resemblance  theory  of  knowledge,  as  developed  in  M. 
Bergson's  thought,  issues  in  the  conviction  that  to  be  genuine,  knowl- 
edge must  coincide  with  its  object,  M.  Bergson  supposes  that  each 
reality  is  the  genuine  truth  of  itself.  Truth  in  his  hypothesis,  conse- 
quently, can  not  be  expressed  in  terms  of  a  relation  holding  between 
different  realities,  and  he  adopts  implicitly  the  view  that  predication 
is  falsification,  since  it  brings  one  reality  into  relation  with  another 
not  itself.  The  implication  manifests  itself  in  connection  with  the 
criticism  of  associationistic  psychology  contained  in  Time  and  Free- 
Will,  at  the  points  in  his  exposition  where  M.  Bergson  denies  that 
pure  quality,  which  is  genuine  mind,  can  come  into  contact  with 
quantity.  To  this  very  "confusion"  of  quality  and  quantity,  in  fact,  M. 
Bergson  traces  the  paradoxes  of  the  eleatic  philosophers. 18  And  his 
refutation  of  Zeno  consists  in  denying  that  motion  and  the  measure 
of  motion,  or  quality  and  space,  can  legitimately  be  related.  Zeno 
went  wrong,  M.  Bergson  argues,  in  confusing  various  motions  with 
each  other  by  means  of  dimensional  space;  since  each  motion  is  in 
reality  one  and  indivisible,  and  incommensurable  with  everything  else. 
Motion,  strictly  speaking,  is  pure  unextended  mobility,  and  can  not 
be  measured,  because  the  "only  thing  we  are  able  to  measure  is 
space."19  Obviously  this  solution  of  the  paradoxes  of  Elea  is  merely 
a  restatement  in  terms  of  extensity  and  change,  of  M.  Bergson's  con- 
viction that  quantity  and  quality  are  different  and,  therefore,  quite 
separate  from  one  another;  this  conviction  in  turn  derives  from  his 
peculiar  theory  of  epistemological  dualism.  M.  Bergson's  refutation 
of  Zeno  is,  therefore,  a  development  of  the  assumption  that  in  order 
to  be  true  knowledge  must  absolutely  resemble  its  object. 

We  may  say  in  conclusion  that  the  contradictions  that  split  the 
chief  branches  of  M.  Bergson's  philosophical  doctrine  into  two  parts 
originate  unexceptionally  in  his  discovery  that  the  knowledge  of  posi- 
tive science  is  different  from  what  the  resemblance-epistemology 
teaches  that  knowledge  should  be.  Clinging  to  his  epistemological 
assumption  M.  Bergson  rejects  or  condemns  or  disparages  the  knowl- 
edge of  positive  science;  whenever  his  philosophy  has  an  alternative 

18  Time  and  Free-Will,  p.  74. 
»•  Time  and  Free-Will,  p.  230. 


68  LOGIC    o. F    BERGSON'S    PHILOSOPHY 

choice  between  positive  science  and  epistemology,  the  resemblance- 
epistemology  is  preferred.  But  instead  of  sacrificing  knowledge  to  a 
theory  of  knowledge  it  would  be  possible  to  shape  one's  epistemology 
on  what  an  observation  of  science  shows  human  knowledge  to  be. 
Only  in  such  a  procedure,  we  believe,  could  the  contradictions  and 
difficulties  that  trouble  the  course  of  M.  Bergson's  speculation  in 
philosophy  be  escaped. 


VITA 

George  Williams  Peckham,  Jr.,  was  born  April  7,  1885,  in  Mil- 
waukee, Wisconsin.  A.  B.,  University  of  Wisconsin,  1906;  Student, 
University  of  Chicago,  1905;  Harvard  Law  School,  1906;  in  Germany, 
1907;  in  France,  1908;  Harvard  Graduate  School,  1909;  in  Italy, 
1910;  College  de  France,  1911;  Columbia  University,  1911-1913; 
Assistant  in  Philosophy,  Columbia  University  1913-1915;  Lecturer, 
1915-1917. 


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